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Roast Leg of Mutton

A slow-roasted leg of mutton basted with clarified dripping or suet, seasoned with salt and flour, served with its own gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,695 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells grass, green. The science ↓

Roast Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the leg

  1. Hang the leg of mutton 24 inches from the fire using a hook and yarn.

  2. Baste the meat with clarified dripping or suet.

  3. Place an earthen pan under the dripping pan to catch the drippings.

Roast

  1. Ladle the gravy into the earthen pan.

  2. Baste the meat again with the gravy.

  3. Cook the leg for about three hours.

  4. Move the leg closer to the fire for the last half hour.

  5. Mix boiling water with salt.

  6. Pour the salted water over the joint slowly to increase gravy.

  7. Dust the meat with flour.

  8. Baste the meat again.

Make the gravy

  1. Save the drippings for gravy.

  2. Cool the drippings.

  3. Remove fat from the drippings.

  4. Rewarm the drippings before serving.

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. Mutton + flourtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

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 that is roasted and carved for the dish.
Clarified dripping or suet
Fat that coats the meat, helping it brown and keeping the surface from drying out.
Boiling water
Mixed with salt and poured over the joint to add liquid that drips down and builds the gravy.
Flour
Dusted on the meat, where it helps form a browned, slightly crisp surface.

The step that matters

Pour the salted water over the joint slowly. Pouring slowly lets the liquid spread over the meat and drip into the pan rather than running off, so the gravy builds without washing away the browned surface.

“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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