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Leg of Mutton Braised

A braised leg of mutton cooked with bacon, herbs, onion, and a butter‑flour gravy, served over vegetable puree or soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton Braised

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove the knuckle from the leg of mutton and cut it into 2 or 3 pieces.

  2. Trim off any excess fat from the leg and half roast it.

Stew

  1. Place the leg and knuckle pieces in a stewpan with the trimmings and bacon.

  2. Add thyme, marjoram, other herbs, and the onion with cloves.

  3. Add the butter rolled in flour and stew gently, shaking occasionally.

  4. Turn the meat while stewing until tender.

Make the glaze and serve

  1. Remove the meat, skim the gravy, and strain it.

  2. Boil the gravy until reduced to a glaze.

  3. Make a puree or soup of vegetables and place the mutton on top.

  4. Cover the meat with the glaze and serve.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Marjoram + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Marjoram + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton leg
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Rich fat bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the stewing liquid and meat.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the gravy so it can be reduced to a glaze.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness to the gravy as it stews.

The step that matters

Stew gently until tender. Gentle, low heat lets collagen in the tough mutton break down slowly into gelatin, making the meat tender. A hard boil toughens and dries the muscle fibres, so the gravy should barely simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, thyme, marjoram, clove, butter, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, thyme, marjoram, clove, butter, flour. 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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