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Boiled Leg of Mutton

A boiled leg of mutton served with a dressing of eggs, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the mutton

  1. Place the mutton in a pot with enough cold water to cover it well and add the salt.

  2. Boil for three hours.

Make the egg sauce

  1. Hard boil the eggs.

  2. Take two eggs and mash them finely with 2 tablespoons of butter.

  3. Take 1 pint of the water used to boil the mutton.

  4. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  5. Pour the mixture over the mashed eggs. Cook for a moment.

  6. Add 1 tablespoon of butter.

Serve

  1. Slice the remaining two eggs thinly.

  2. Lay the sliced eggs over the mutton.

  3. Pour the dressing on top.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Mutton + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Long boiling turns the tough leg meat tender and produces the broth used in the sauce.
Eggs
Mashed and sliced eggs add richness and body to the dressing and a soft texture to the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the dressing.
Flour
Starch thickens the mutton broth into a smooth sauce once it is heated.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour until smooth. Flour must be fully dispersed in the liquid before it heats, because unmixed starch clumps and cannot thicken evenly. Stirring the flour into the cooled broth first keeps the dressing smooth.

“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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