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Cold Roast Leg of Mutton

A cold roast leg of mutton cooked with onions, parsley, bay leaves, carrots, turnips, and veal forcemeat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 leg

  1. Trim the large end of the leg to make it flat.

  2. Cut evenly through the joint where it has been carved.

  3. Remove the bone from the fillet and replace it with veal forcemeat.

Simmer

  1. Place the meat, bones, knuckle, and trimmings in a large pot.

  2. Cover with water or broth and bring to a boil.

  3. Add onions, parsley, bay leaves, carrots, and turnips.

  4. Simmer gently for about 2 hours.

  5. Thicken the gravy with spices or store-sauce before serving.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. 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 dish and gives the meat and its juices for the gravy.
Veal forcemeat
Fills the space left by the removed bone, adding moisture and a softer, richer texture.
Onions
Release sugars and aroma into the broth, sweetening and flavouring the gravy.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the simmering liquid as they soften.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for about 2 hours. A gentle simmer keeps the liquid below a hard boil, so the meat becomes tender without its proteins tightening and toughening. A rolling boil makes the meat dry and the gravy cloudy.

Swap the onion

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

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

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