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Braised Leg of Mutton

Braised leg of mutton cooked slowly with bacon, onions, carrots, herbs, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Braised Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the joint

  1. Remove the bone from the leg of mutton up to the first joint.

  2. Lard the inside of the boned joint with bacon strips seasoned with mixed spice and minced savory herbs. Alternatively, fill the cavity with highly seasoned forcemeat.

  3. Sew up the meat.

Braise

  1. Place it in a braising pan with bacon slices underneath and on top.

  2. Add sliced onions, carrots, bay leaves, a bunch of savory herbs, and bones or bits of mutton or veal.

  3. Pour in ¾ pint of gravy.

  4. Stew the meat gently for 4 to 5 hours, keeping embers on top or placing it in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

Glaze and serve

  1. Strain the gravy.

  2. Reduce the strained gravy to a glaze and brush it over the meat.

  3. Serve with boiled white beans or a mild ragout of garlic or eschalots underneath the mutton.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Carrot + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Beans + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,935 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + beanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 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
Provides the main meat that becomes tender during long, slow braising.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that keeps the lean meat moist as it cooks.
Onions
Break down during braising to sweeten and enrich the gravy.
Carrots
Release sweetness into the braising liquid, rounding out the gravy's flavour.
Gravy
Forms the braising liquid that gently cooks the meat and later reduces to a glaze.

The step that matters

Stew the meat gently for 4 to 5 hours. Low, steady heat lets collagen in the tough connective tissue slowly convert to gelatin, making the meat tender. Boiling or rushing toughens the muscle fibres and dries the surface.

Swap the beans

The recipe marks beans as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, carrot, garlic):

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Chickpeafits about as well
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Sesamefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, carrot, garlic. 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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