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Mutton, Leg of

A slow‑cooked stew of a leg of mutton with onions, carrots, turnip, and a brown butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Mutton, Leg of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stew

  1. In a large stewpan, place the mirepoix (onions, carrots, turnip) and cover with boiling stock or water.

  2. Lay the mutton leg on top, wrap it in greased paper, and cover with a tight-fitting lid.

  3. Cook gently for 3 to 3.5 hours, adding more stock or water as needed.

Make the sauce

  1. Half an hour before serving, melt the butter in a pan and lightly fry the shallots.

  2. Add the flour and cook until it turns nut-brown.

  3. Keep the meat warm, strain the stock, and increase it to 1 pint.

  4. Pour the stock over the browned flour and butter, stirring until boiling.

  5. Season to taste and boil gently for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour a little sauce over the meat and serve the rest in a tureen.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton leg
Long, gentle cooking in liquid tenderises the tough connective tissue into soft, moist meat.
Flour
Browned in butter and then thickened with stock, it gives the sauce body and a nutty flavour.
Butter
Carries the flour and shallots, and adds richness to the sauce.
Onions
Break down during the long simmer, adding sweetness and depth to the stock.
Carrots
Release sugars during slow cooking, adding gentle sweetness to the stock.
Shallots
Softened in butter, they add a mild, savoury aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Nut-brown the flour. Cooking flour in butter until it turns nut-brown develops roasted flavour and colour. Stopping early leaves a raw, pale taste, and burning gives a bitter one.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, 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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