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Roast Leg of Lamb or Mutton

Roast a leg of lamb or mutton with cloves, salt, pepper, flour, and water, then thicken the gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Roast Leg of Lamb or Mutton

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash the leg of lamb or mutton well.

  2. Stick 4 cloves into the skin.

  3. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and a little flour.

Roast

  1. Place the leg in the lower part of a covered roaster and put it uncovered in a very hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for at least 20 minutes to sear.

  2. Add 1 pint of boiling water to the pan, cover closely, and bake slowly for 3 hours.

  3. Baste every 30 minutes and turn once.

  4. Remove to a hot platter.

Make the gravy

  1. Thicken the gravy with 2 heaping tablespoons of flour made smooth with water, and add water to make a pint.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

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

  3. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lamb + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of lamb or mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow cooking with moisture.
Flour
Coats the surface to encourage browning, and thickens the gravy as it dissolves in the pan juices.
Boiling water
Creates steam in the covered roaster, keeping the meat moist during the long slow bake.

The step that matters

Searing in a very hot oven before covering. The short blast of high heat browns the surface and builds flavour through browning reactions. Covering the pan and baking slowly afterwards keeps the meat juicy and lets the connective tissue soften.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, flour):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, flour. 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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