Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Leg of Mutton

A boiled leg of mutton served with caper sauce and mashed turnips and potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and potato work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 562 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the mutton

  1. Boil the leg of mutton until tender.

Prepare the accompaniments

  1. Prepare caper sauce to serve with the mutton.

  2. Mash the turnips and potatoes separately.

Serve

  1. Serve the mutton with caper sauce and the mashed vegetables.

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 + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mutton + potatotop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Mutton + turniptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,558 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Sauce + turniptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + potatotop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton
Main cut of meat; long boiling breaks down connective tissue, making it tender.
Turnips
Mashed to provide a soft, mild, starchy side that balances the rich meat.
Potatoes
Mashed to add starch and a smooth, soft texture alongside the meat.

The step that matters

Boil the leg of mutton until tender. Boiling at a steady simmer, not a hard boil, lets collagen slowly convert to gelatin so the meat stays moist and tender rather than tough and stringy.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, sauce, turnip. 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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipes