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Leg of Mutton Boiled

Leg of mutton boiled with carrots, turnips, and a side of mashed turnips seasoned with flour, butter, milk, egg yolk, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton Boiled

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the mutton

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

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Skim off any foam.

  4. Add the salt, carrots, and turnips.

  5. Simmer gently until done, about 15 minutes per pound.

  6. Remove the cooked mutton from the pot.

Make the turnip mash and serve

  1. Mash the turnips.

  2. Mix the mashed turnips with flour, butter, milk, egg yolk, pepper, and salt.

  3. Place the mutton on a serving dish with a decorative paper ruffle on the shank bone.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering in water.
Egg yolk
Enriches the turnip mash and helps bind it into a smooth, rich texture.
Flour
Thickens the mashed turnips so they hold their shape on the plate.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the mash a smoother mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the mashed turnips.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. A gentle simmer cooks the mutton evenly and keeps the meat tender; a hard boil toughens muscle fibres and can break up the meat.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, flour, butter, milk, egg, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, flour, butter, milk, egg, pepper. 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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