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Leg of Mutton

A leg of mutton roasted with garlic, herbs, and spices, served with a savory gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Trim the leg of mutton, removing sinews, skin, and gristle.

  2. Cut the meat into neat slices and place the slices on a plate.

Make the stock

  1. Cover the bones with boiling water in a pot.

  2. Add peppercorns, allspice, parsley, celery, and lemon thyme.

  3. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Roast and finish

  1. Boil the garlic in salted water for 5 minutes, then drain it.

  2. Place the garlic in the dripping pan under the mutton while roasting.

  3. Add the garlic to the gravy in a stewing pan for browning.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and browned as it roasts.
Garlic
Adds aroma and a mellow sweetness to the dripping pan and gravy as it cooks.
Celery
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour to the simmering liquid that becomes the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 30 minutes. A gentle simmer extracts flavour from the bones and aromatics without boiling hard, which would cloud the liquid and can make it greasy and harsh.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, clove, allspice, parsley, celery, lemon, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, clove, allspice, parsley, celery, lemon, thyme. 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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