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A Boiled Leo of Muttox with Tongue and Turnips

A boiled leg of mutton cooked with onions, parsley, thyme, winter savory, carrots, and optional smoked ox‑tongue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and winter savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 780 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

A Boiled Leo of Muttox with Tongue and Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the leg of mutton into a handsome form and wash it without soaking.

  2. Place the mutton in a pot and cover it with cold water.

Cook the broth

  1. Bring the water to a boil, skimming off any scum that rises to the surface.

  2. After the first skimming, add the salt to help clarify the broth.

  3. Once the broth is clear, add the onions studded with cloves, parsley, thyme, savory, and chopped carrots.

  4. Reduce the heat and let the mutton simmer gently for 2 to 2.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve the mutton with caper, brown cucumber, or oyster sauce.

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. Thyme + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together780 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together863 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Clove + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together690 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Coarse sea salt
Helps draw out impurities so the broth becomes clearer.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma to the broth as they cook.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise as the water heats. Removing it early keeps the broth clear and the flavour clean, so it should be skimmed as it forms, especially after the first boil.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, clove, parsley, thyme, winter savory, carrot):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, clove, parsley, thyme, winter savory, carrot. 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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