Name: To Boil a Leg of Mutton
Ingredients: 1 leg of mutton; 1 pint caper sauce (finely-chopped capers in melted butter); Turnips (mashed or whole, for serving)

Why it works: Capers and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 145 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Boil a Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

1 leg of mutton
1 pint caper sauce (finely-chopped capers in melted butter)
Turnips (mashed or whole, for serving)

Directions

Keep the leg of mutton for 4-5 days before boiling.
Bend the shank and cut the tendon at the joint if necessary to shorten the leg.
Do not wrap the leg in cloth while boiling to avoid spoiling the broth.
Do not boil vegetables with the mutton to prevent flavoring the meat.
Dish the leg with a little of the cooking liquid, placing the lower side up for carving.

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.

Capers + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together145 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together678 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Capers + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,637 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, sauce, capers, butter):

Shallotfits better
Mustardfits about as well
Chivefits about as well
Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, sauce, capers, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More boiled leg of mutton recipes

with Caper Sauce 5 with Tongue and Turnips 4 See all 96 →

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Mutton Soup56 recipes

Turnip Soup43 recipes

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To Boil a Leg of Mutton