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Leg of Mutton

A leg of mutton prepared by hanging, sugar coating, or paste, wrapped in veal caul and roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and veal are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,394 recipes. Both carry 1-nonanal, which smells fatty, waxy. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hang the mutton for three weeks if the weather is cold.

  2. Remove the skin carefully.

  3. Cover the leg with coarse brown sugar in a pan.

  4. Turn the leg daily while coated with sugar.

Wrap and roast

  1. When ready to roast, remove the skin.

  2. Wrap the leg in a veal caul again.

  3. Cover the lower part with coarse paste to retain gravy.

  4. Roast the wrapped leg.

  5. Cut the knuckle into a joint for smaller families.

  6. Cut the fillet into steaks for broiling.

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

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

  2. Mutton + sugartop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together726 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + vealtop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,001 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

Mutton leg
Forms the main body of the roast, with its own fat and meat giving the dish its flavour.
Coarse brown sugar
Sweetens the surface and promotes browning on the outside of the meat.
Veal caul
Wraps the leg to hold in moisture and fat during roasting.
Coarse paste
Seals the lower part of the leg so juices stay in and gravy is retained.

“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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