Skip to main content

Leg of Mutton Boned and Forced

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

Why it works: Thyme and winter savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 780 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton Boned and Forced

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Turn the leg of mutton with the underside facing up.

  2. Cut through the skin from the knuckle to the first joint.

  3. Raise the skin from the flesh along the bone, cutting down to the bone.

  4. Work the knife around the bone until you reach the socket.

  5. Remove the flat bone from the large end of the joint.

  6. Loosen the skin around the middle joint carefully to draw out the bones.

  7. Fill the cavities with forcemeat, adding seasoning of eschalot, garlic, or onion.

  8. Chop nearly 1 pound of the inside mutton with bacon and mix with parsley, thyme, winter savory, pepper, mace, salt, nutmeg, and lemon rind or eschalots.

  9. Sew the skin neatly together where it was cut open and tie the knuckle tightly to prevent gravy escape.

  10. Replace the flat bone at the large end and use a needle and twine to draw the edges of the meat together.

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. Thyme + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together780 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Winter savory + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together406 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, parsley, thyme, winter savory, pepper, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, parsley, thyme, winter savory, pepper, nutmeg, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipes