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Boiled Leg of Mutton

A boiled leg of mutton cooked with salt, turnips, carrots, onions, celery, and served with mashed turnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the leg of mutton in a pot covered with cold water.

  2. Add ½ cup of coarse sea salt.

  3. Remove any scum that rises to the surface.

Boil and simmer

  1. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer for 3 to 4 hours.

  2. One hour before it is done, add the turnips, carrots, onions, and celery.

  3. If the water cools too much, briefly return the pot to the heat until it boils again.

Serve

  1. Serve the mutton garnished with the whole vegetables.

  2. Reserve some turnips to mash with cream, pepper, and salt in a separate dish.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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
Is the main cut of meat, cooked slowly in simmering water until tender.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the water and the meat as it simmers.
Turnips
Cook in the broth and are reserved to be mashed with cream.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth texture to the mashed turnips.

The step that matters

Keeping the water at a gentle simmer. If the water cools too much, the meat cooks unevenly and slowly. Returning the pot to a boil briefly keeps the cooking temperature steady so the meat becomes tender without toughening.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, turnip, carrot, celery, cream, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, turnip, carrot, celery, cream, pepper. 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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