Name: Cold Roast Leg of Mutton
Ingredients: leg of mutton; veal forcemeat; 2 onions; bunch of parsley; 2-3 bay leaves; 4-5 carrots; turnips; water or broth

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cold Roast Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

Cut off the large end of the leg to make the fillet flat.
Evenly cut through the joint where it has been carved and remove the bone from the fillet.
Replace the bone with veal forcemeat.

Braise and serve

Place the meat, bones, knuckle, and trimmings in a large saucepan and cover with water or broth.
Bring to a boil, then add onions, parsley, bay leaves, carrots, and turnips.
Simmer gently for nearly 2 hours.
Thicken the gravy with spices or store sauce before serving with the vegetables.

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.

Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,842 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton: Forms the main body of the roast and supplies the rich meat flavour in the gravy.
Veal forcemeat: Fills the space left by the bone, adding moisture and a tender, mild texture to the roast.
Onions: Release sweetness and aromatic flavour into the simmering liquid as they soften.
Carrots: Add natural sweetness and body to the gravy while becoming tender in the simmer.

Swap the onion

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

Leekfits better
Parsnipfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

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