Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Leg of Mutton with Caper Sauce

A boiled leg of mutton served with a butter and caper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and capers are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,637 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton with Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Wash the leg of mutton and rub it well with coarse sea salt.

Cook and make the sauce

  1. Plunge the mutton into boiling salted water and cook for three hours.

  2. For the caper sauce, melt butter in an amount proportional to the meat.

  3. Add one large tablespoon of finely chopped capers to the melted butter.

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. Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Mutton + caperstop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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 that is cooked slowly in boiling water until tender.
Butter
Forms the base of the caper sauce, adding richness and a smooth, rounded texture.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter and meat.

The step that matters

Cooking the mutton in boiling salted water. Starting the leg in boiling water and holding it there for a long, steady cook breaks down connective tissue, which makes the meat tender. Water that stops boiling slows this process and can leave the meat tough.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Pepperfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Capersthe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, 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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipesCurried MuttonCurried Mutton9 recipes