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Leg of Mutton Braised

A braised leg of mutton cooked with knuckle-bone, butter or bacon, onion, sweet herbs, and served with garlic puree.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton Braised

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Trim the leg of mutton.

  2. Cut off the knuckle.

  3. Half roast the leg of mutton.

Braise

  1. Place the mutton in a stewpan with the broken knuckle-bone, trimmings, butter or bacon, onion, and sweet herbs.

  2. Shake the stewpan over the fire until there is enough gravy to stew the mutton, turning it occasionally.

  3. Remove the mutton.

  4. Strain the gravy.

  5. Boil the gravy until reduced to a glaze.

Make the garlic puree and serve

  1. Boil garlic in water for five minutes.

  2. Strain the garlic.

  3. Repeat with fresh water three more times until the garlic is rich and delicate.

  4. Cover the mutton with the glaze and serve it with a garlic puree underneath.

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 + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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 cut that gives the dish its meat and body after braising.
Butter or fat bacon
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps keep the meat moist during cooking.
Knuckle-bone
Releases gelatin and savoury flavour into the gravy, giving the glaze body.
Garlic
Provides the aromatic flavour of the puree served under the mutton.

The step that matters

Boil the gravy until reduced to a glaze. Reducing concentrates the gelatin and flavour in the gravy so it clings to the meat. If it is under-reduced it stays thin and runny, and if over-reduced it can turn overly salty or sticky.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, onion, pepper, garlic. 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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