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Leg of Mutton Braised

A braised leg of mutton cooked slowly with bacon, veal, carrots, onions, herbs, and consommé, served with white beans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton Braised

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Cut the bacon into pieces as thick as your little finger.

  2. Roll the bacon in a herb mixture and chopped parsley.

  3. Stick the bacon through the mutton along the bone.

Braise

  1. Trim off the ends of the bacon and place them in a stewpan with veal, carrots, onions, and the herb bundle.

  2. Stir over heat until the bacon begins to catch.

  3. Add the leg of mutton and a ladleful of consommé.

  4. Simmer gently for about four hours with heat on top.

  5. Once done, remove the mutton and strain the liquid.

  6. Return the mutton to the pot.

Finish the gravy and serve

  1. Boil the gravy.

  2. Skim the gravy.

  3. Reduce the gravy to a glaze.

  4. Glaze the mutton and serve it with white beans.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Mutton + vealtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton
Is the main joint that is braised until tender and then glazed.
Fat bacon
Larded through the meat, it adds fat and savoury flavour as it melts during cooking.
Veal
Adds body and savoury depth to the braising liquid, which becomes the gravy.
Consommé
Provides the liquid for braising, which reduces into a flavourful glaze.

The step that matters

Reduce the gravy to a glaze. Reducing concentrates flavour and thickens the liquid through evaporation. Boiling too hard or too long can scorch the sugars and make the glaze bitter or overly salty.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, veal, carrot, onion, clove):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, veal, carrot, onion, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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