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A Roast Leg of Mutton

A roast leg of mutton cooked with water and vinegar, served with fat and brown sediment for gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 615 recipes. Both carry 3-methylbutanol, which smells malty, whiskey. The science ↓

A Roast Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the leg of mutton in a roasting pan.

  3. Add a little cold water to the pan.

Roast

  1. Roast the mutton until cooked to your preference.

Finish

  1. Once roasted, carefully pour off the fat from the dripping pan into a small basin.

  2. Retain the brown sediment at the bottom of the pan for gravy.

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 + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together615 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

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 main meat, which browns and firms as it roasts.
Cold water
Adds moisture to the pan, helping drippings from scorching while the meat roasts.

The step that matters

Roast the mutton until cooked to your preference. Doneness depends on the meat's internal temperature, which keeps rising after it leaves the oven. Checking with a thermometer and removing it slightly early helps prevent overcooking and dry meat.

“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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