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Gigot Au Jus, or a LA Royale — Leg of Mutton in Gravy

A leg of mutton stewed with carrots, onions, calf's foot or veal, then reduced to a gravy jelly and reheated.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Gigot Au Jus, or a LA Royale — Leg of Mutton in Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the mutton

  1. Place the leg of mutton in a stew pan with sliced carrots, chopped onions, calf's foot or knuckle of veal, and a little coarse sea salt.

  2. Cover with water and simmer over low heat.

  3. When the mutton begins to shrink from the bone, remove it from the pan.

Make the gravy

  1. Boil the remaining liquid until reduced to about 3 pints, then strain through a sieve, pressing the vegetables and veal.

  2. Let the strained liquid cool to a jelly and remove the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the leg of mutton to the stew pan with the gravy jelly.

  2. Cover and boil gently for a couple of hours, ensuring it doesn't burn or stick.

  3. Serve in a deep dish with the concentrated gravy, garnished with lemon slices.

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. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  2. Mutton + vealtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  3. Carrot + vealtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Onion + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + carrottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,878 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 meat that becomes tender and flavourful as it slowly simmers.
Calf's foot or knuckle of veal
Its collagen turns to gelatin, giving the strained gravy a jelly-like body.
Carrots
Release sweetness and aromatic depth into the cooking liquid, flavouring the gravy.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma to the cooking liquid as they soften and release sugars.

The step that matters

Returning the mutton to the gravy and boiling gently. Boiling too hard or leaving the pan unattended can scorch the concentrated gravy and make the meat stick and burn, so a gentle simmer with occasional checks protects both flavour and texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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