Name: To Boil a Leg of Lamb
Ingredients: 1 leg of lamb; 1 loin of lamb; leeks; strong gravy; coarse sea salt; dew spinach; crispy parsley; gooseberry sauce

Why it works: Leek and spinach share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

To Boil a Leg of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the leg from the loin.
Boil the leg for 45 minutes.
Cut the loin into pieces and fry until golden brown.
Simmer the fried pieces in strong gravy.
Place the leg on a dish and arrange the leeks around it.
Pour the gravy over the leg.
Garnish with lumps of dew spinach and crispy parsley.
Serve with gooseberry sauce on the side.

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.

Leek + spinachtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together42 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Spinach + gooseberrytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together18 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Leek + parsleytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together759 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Spinach + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,025 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Parsley + gooseberrytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17 recipes

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

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

Swap the gooseberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, leek, spinach, parsley, sauce):

Lemonfits better
Limefits about as well
Avocadofits about as well
Gooseberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, leek, spinach, parsley, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.