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To Force and Roast a Leg of Mutton

A leg of mutton stuffed with oysters, breadcrumbs, spices, egg yolks, anchovy, and raw egg, then roasted and basted with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Force and Roast a Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Open the leg of mutton on the underside down to the bone.

  2. Remove the bone at the joint, leaving the shank bone.

  3. Parboil the oysters in their own liquor. Chop the oysters slightly.

  4. Mix the oysters with bread crumbs, pepper, salt, mace or nutmeg, chopped egg yolks, minced anchovy, and raw egg.

  5. Stuff the mixture into the cavity where the bone was removed.

  6. Tie the stuffing tightly with string.

Roast and serve

  1. Spit the leg and roast it, basting with butter.

  2. If stuffing drops out, catch it in a plate under the meat in the dripping pan.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the saved stuffing with gravy and heat.

  4. Pour the heated stuffing under the meat before serving.

  5. Garnish with pickles or capsicum if available.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Mutton + anchovytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour and a soft, moist texture to the stuffing.
Raw egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a crumbly, moist texture to the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body.
Anchovy
Adds a deep, salty savouriness that rounds out the stuffing.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the outside of the meat brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Tying the stuffing tightly. The stuffing is held in only by string. If it is loose, it can swell, shift, or fall out during roasting, so it must be packed firmly and tied well before the leg goes on the spit.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, oyster, bread, pepper, egg, anchovy, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, oyster, bread, pepper, egg, anchovy, butter. 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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