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Leg of Mutton

Leg of mutton boiled with root vegetables and served with mashed turnip garnish and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the mutton

  1. Place the leg of mutton in a large pot and cover it with cold water.

  2. Bring the water to a boil, skimming off any foam.

  3. Add the salt, carrots, turnips, and parsnips.

  4. Boil for about 2.5 hours until the mutton is cooked.

Prepare and serve

  1. Prepare mashed turnips by mixing with flour, butter, cream, nutmeg, and pepper.

  2. Shape the mashed turnips into large egg shapes using two tablespoons.

  3. Arrange the turnips in a circular row around the mutton on a serving dish.

  4. Insert pieces of boiled carrot between the turnips.

  5. Pour gravy under the mutton and serve with caper sauce on the side.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsnip + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together98 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton
Is the main cut of meat, cooked by gentle boiling until tender.
Turnips
Mashed with cream and butter, they give the side dish a soft, rich texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the mashed turnips.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the mashed turnips.
Flour
Thickens the mashed turnips so they hold their egg shapes.

The step that matters

Shape the mashed turnips. Mashed turnips that are too loose will not hold their egg shapes. Flour helps bind them, so the mixture should be firm enough to shape before arranging on the dish.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, turnip, parsnip, flour, butter, cream):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Celeryfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, parsnip, flour, butter, cream. 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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