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Braised Leg of Mutton

A slow‑cooked mutton leg wrapped in bacon and spices, braised with onions, carrots, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion 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

Prepare the leg

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

  2. Roll strips of bacon in mixed spices and minced savory herbs, then lard the inside of the boned portion.

  3. Sew up the meat and place it in a braising pan with bacon slices underneath and on top.

Braise

  1. Add onions, carrots, bay leaves, savory herbs, and bits of mutton or veal if using.

  2. Cover and braise for 2 hours on moderate heat.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  3. Garlic + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Mutton + carrottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,878 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

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

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, becoming tender as its connective tissue breaks down during slow braising.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor, and its slices above and below the meat help keep it moist.
Onions
Break down during braising to add sweetness and savory depth to the cooking liquid.
Carrots
Release natural sugars during braising, adding sweetness and body to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Cover and braise gently. Slow, moderate heat under a cover lets tough connective tissue in the mutton convert to gelatin slowly. Boiling or rushing the braise toughens the meat and dries the liquid.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Garlicthe original

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