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Boiled Leg of Mutton

A boiled leg of mutton seasoned with coarse sea salt, served with caper sauce, parsley, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,762 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the leg of mutton and remove the fat.

  2. Place the mutton in well salted water.

Boil

  1. Skim the surface and simmer for twelve minutes per pound.

  2. Optionally boil ¼ cup of rice with the mutton or tie the meat in a cloth to prevent discoloration.

Serve

  1. Serve with thick caper sauce poured over the mutton.

  2. Garnish the mutton with parsley.

  3. Serve with currant jelly.

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. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Mutton + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Rice + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,396 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sauce + parsleytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,693 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mutton + parsleytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,915 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 simmered until cooked through.
Rice
Optionally boiled with the mutton, it may help reduce discoloration of the meat.
Caper sauce
Thick sauce poured over the mutton, adding moisture and sharp, acidic flavour.
Currant jelly
Served alongside for sweetness and fruity acidity that balances the rich meat.

The step that matters

Simmer, don't boil hard. Gentle simmering cooks the mutton evenly and keeps the meat tender; a rolling boil toughens muscle fibres and can make the surface break up. Skimming the surface removes foam and impurities that would cloud the broth.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, rice, sauce, parsley. 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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