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Superior Receipt for Roast Leg of Mutton

A roasted leg of mutton boiled and then roasted, served with optional garlic ragout or roasted tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,076 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Superior Receipt for Roast Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Poach

  1. Cover the leg of mutton with cold water.

  2. Bring the water to a boil, then let it simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the mutton from the water and place it on a spit.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the mutton for 1 hour and 15 minutes to 1 hour and 30 minutes, depending on its weight.

  2. Serve with garlic ragout or garnish with roasted tomatoes if desired.

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. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Mutton + tomatotop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  3. Mutton + garlictop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together673 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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 and juicy with gentle cooking and roasting.
Cold water
Gently cooks the meat during the initial simmer, starting slowly so it heats evenly.

The step that matters

Simmering the mutton gently. A rolling boil toughens meat fibres and can make the outside tough while the inside stays underdone. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue soften slowly, so the meat stays tender and juicy before roasting.

Swap the garlic

The recipe marks garlic as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, tomato):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Garlicthe original
  3. Corianderfits about as well
  4. Pepperfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, tomato. 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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