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Leg of Mutton Boiled

A boiled leg of mutton served with caper sauce and mashed turnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the leg of mutton as for roasting.

  2. Soak it in cold water for 2 hours.

Boil and serve

  1. Place it in a pot and cover with water, then add salt and onion to the water.

  2. Boil gently for 3 hours, adjusting time based on weight.

  3. Remove from heat and let it sit covered in the water for 10-15 minutes before serving.

  4. Serve with caper sauce and mashed turnips.

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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Mutton + turniptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,558 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Sauce + turniptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Onion and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
The main meat; long, gentle simmering breaks down connective tissue so it becomes tender.
Onion
Adds aromatic, mildly sweet flavor to the cooking water and the meat.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 3 hours. A hard, rolling boil toughens meat and can break it apart. Gentle simmering lets the connective tissue slowly convert to gelatin, which makes the mutton tender and moist.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Turnipthe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, sauce. 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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