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Gig'ot Aux Choux-fleurs. — Leg of Mutton with Cauliflowers.

A leg of mutton cooked with cauliflower, served with a butter and stock sauce and finished with vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,113 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Gig'ot Aux Choux-fleurs. — Leg of Mutton with Cauliflowers.

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the mutton

  1. Boil the leg of mutton in salted water until cooked.

  2. Place the mutton on a serving dish.

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Blanch the cauliflower.

  2. Boil the cauliflower in salted water with butter.

  3. Arrange the cauliflower around the mutton.

Make and serve the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine cullis, butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Thicken the mixture over heat.

  3. Pour the sauce over the cauliflower.

  4. Before serving, drizzle with vinegar.

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. Cauliflower + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Cauliflower + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together888 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Mutton + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton
Provides the main cooked meat, which is the centrepiece of the dish.
Cauliflower
Adds a mild, tender vegetable base that soaks up the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and helps give the sauce a smooth, glossy body.
Cullis
Forms the base of the sauce, supplying savoury meaty flavour and body when thickened.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the rich sauce and meat.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce over heat. Heat must be controlled so the sauce thickens smoothly. Too much heat can cause butter to separate or the sauce to scorch, leaving it greasy or lumpy.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, pepper, meat, vinegar. 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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