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Icelandic Roasted Lamb with Sauce

A roast of boned leg of lamb rubbed with rosemary and pepper, served with a mushroom and blue cheese sauce.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and rosemary work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 396 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven350 degrees
Timeabout 90 minutes

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

  • SAUCE

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Trim excess fat from lamb.

  2. Rinse, dry, roll and tie the lamb with kitchen string.

  3. Rub rosemary and pepper all over the meat.

  4. Wrap and refrigerate until 30 minutes before cooking time.

Roast and rest

  1. Roast lamb at 350 degrees for about 90 minutes, until a meat thermometer inserted in the center of the roast registers 130 degrees.

  2. Let stand 10 minutes before carving.

Make the sauce

  1. Let dried mushrooms soak in boiling water for five minutes.

  2. Drain through a paper coffee filter cone, reserving the liquid.

  3. Saute button mushrooms in oil and butter over medium high heat for three minutes.

  4. Reduce heat to medium low.

  5. Add herbs, cheese, jelly, cream, seasonings, drained dried mushrooms and 1/2 cup of the reserved mushroom liquid.

  6. Just before serving, add bitters and heat through gently.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lamb + rosemarytop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Rosemary + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1,8-cineol (eucalyptus, camphor).

  3. Pepper + sagetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Rosemary + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,489 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Rosemary + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Boned leg of lamb
Forms the main meat; roasting cooks it through while keeping it juicy when rested.
Dried portobello mushrooms
Soaked to release concentrated mushroom flavor into the reserved liquid used in the sauce.
Button mushrooms
Sautéed in butter and oil to brown and add savory body to the sauce.
Blue cheese
Melts into the cream to add salty, tangy depth to the sauce.
Light cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky texture.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity to balance the rich, salty cheese.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce gently after adding the bitters. Cream and blue cheese can separate or turn grainy when boiled hard, so keep the heat gentle and add the bitters just before serving so their aroma stays fresh.

Flavor stand-ins for the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, rosemary, pepper, mushroom, olive, butter, blue cheese):

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Garlicbetter flavor fit
  3. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, rosemary, pepper, mushroom, olive, butter, blue cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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