Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Leg of Mutton
Ingredients
Directions
Cure the mutton
Hang the leg of mutton for 2-3 days.
Mix the common salt, coarse sea salt, saltpetre, and brown sugar in a stewpan and heat the mixture.
Rub the hot mixture all over the mutton.
Place the mutton in a pan.
Turn the mutton every day for 6 days.
After 6 days, rub the mutton again with a handful of common salt.
After 10 days, remove the mutton.
Dry and smoke
Dry the mutton.
Dust it with flour.
Hang it over wood smoke for 10 days or more.
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.
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Mutton + flourtop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,695 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).
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Mutton + sugartop 34% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together726 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Wether-mutton leg
- The main meat that is cured, dried and smoked into a preserved joint.
- Common salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during curing, helping preserve it.
- Coarse sea salt
- Adds salt for curing, drawing out moisture and firming the surface of the meat.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat's colour and inhibits spoilage bacteria during long curing.
- Brown sugar
- Balances the saltiness and adds mild sweetness and flavour to the cure.
The step that matters
Rub the hot mixture all over the mutton. The cure must coat the whole surface evenly, since salt and saltpetre only preserve where they penetrate. Missed areas can spoil during the long curing period.
“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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