Why it works: Sorrel and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 231 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Roast Leg of Mutton with Sorrel Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare and roast the mutton
Wipe the leg of mutton with a damp cloth, then with a dry cloth.
Place the leg of mutton in a covered roaster.
Pour ½ cup boiling water over the leg of mutton.
Roast the leg of mutton for 12 minutes per pound.
Fifteen minutes before serving, remove the cover to brown the meat.
If not using a covered roaster, baste the meat with the pan gravy every 15 minutes.
Do not serve made mutton gravy.
Make the sorrel sauce
For the sauce, stir 2 tablespoons butter and 1 tablespoon browned flour into 1 cup boiling water.
Add the minced sorrel, a dash of paprika, and salt.
Cook the sauce for 1 minute.
Remove the sauce from heat.
Slowly beat in the well-whipped egg yolk.
Keep the sauce in boiling water until the mutton is served.
Do not let the sauce cook.
Serve
Serve the mutton with currant jelly.
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.
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Sorrel + flourtop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together231 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sorrel + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together652 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,781 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
What each ingredient does
- Leg of young mutton
- Provides the main meat, which is roasted until browned and tender.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat that gives the sauce a smooth, rounded flavour.
- Browned flour
- Thickens the sauce and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
- Egg yolk
- Enriches and thickens the sauce as it sets gently off the heat.
- Field sorrel
- Adds a sharp, acidic, lemony flavour to the sauce.
The step that matters
Adding the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heating, and if the sauce boils after it goes in, the yolk can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy. Beat it in slowly and keep the sauce hot without cooking it.
Swap the sorrel
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, flour, egg):
- Capersfits about as well
- Sorrelthe original
- Nutmegfits about as well
- Parsleyfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, flour, egg. 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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