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Boiled Leg of Mutton

A whole leg of mutton boiled for several hours and served with various sauces and side dishes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 320 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the shank bone and trim the knuckle from the leg of mutton.

Boil

  1. Place the mutton in a pot of water and add coarse sea salt.

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

  3. Cook for three hours if the leg weighs nine or ten pounds.

Serve

  1. Serve with parsley or celery and butter, or with caper sauce, pickled kidney beans and onion sauce, mashed turnips, spinach, and potatoes.

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 + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together320 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton leg
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy during long, gentle boiling.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and water, flavouring the joint as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth fat to the sliced meat at serving.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam at the boil. Foam is made of proteins and impurities rising from the meat. Removing it keeps the cooking liquid clear and the meat tasting clean rather than scummy.

Swap the kidney beans

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Kidney beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, parsley, butter, sauce, onion, turnip, spinach. 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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