Name: To Boil a Leg of Mutton
Ingredients: 1 leg of mutton, trimmed; cold water, enough to cover the mutton; 1 tablespoon coarse sea salt; 2 medium onions, studded with 12 cloves; 1 large bunch of parsley; 1 sprig of thyme; 1 sprig of savory; 4-5 large carrots, chopped; 4-5 turnips, chopped

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Boil a Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

Wash the leg of mutton but do not soak it.
Place it in a pot and cover with cold water.

Make the broth

Bring to a boil over high heat.
Skim off any scum that forms.
After the first skimming, add the salt to help clarify the broth.
Once the liquid is clear, add the onions, parsley, thyme, savory, carrots, and turnips.
Reduce heat and simmer gently for 2.5 hours.

Serve

Serve with caper, brown cucumber, or oyster sauce.

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.

Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,108 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,842 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton: Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Coarse sea salt: Helps draw out impurities so the broth clarifies as it cooks.
Onions: Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as they soften.
Carrots: Add sweetness and body to the broth as they cook down.
Turnips: Add mild sweetness and texture to the vegetables after simmering.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise as the liquid heats. Removing it soon after boiling keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting instead of cloudy and greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, clove, parsley, thyme, carrot, turnip):

Parsnipfits better
Leekfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, clove, parsley, thyme, carrot, turnip. 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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To Boil a Leg of Mutton