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Roast Leg of Lamb with Small Onions

A roast leg of lamb marinated with herbs, bacon, and garlic, served with small onions and a wine‑lemon sauce.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,407 recipes mention both. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven350
Time2 hours

Ingredients

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

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Chop bacon and garlic.

  2. Make a few deep slits in lamb along the grain of the meat and push mixture into the slits.

  3. Rub the leg with salt and place it in a roasting pan and pour over the olive oil.

  4. Add peppercorns and herbs and leave to marinate for 24 hours in the refrigerator.

Roast the lamb and onions

  1. Preheat oven to 350.

  2. Pour wine over the lamb and place in the oven.

  3. Baste meat every 30 minutes or so.

  4. Put the onions in a pan then cover with cold water and bring to a boil then drain.

  5. Remove outside skin and roots but do not remove any layer of onion or cut into the root.

  6. About 1 hour after you put the lamb in the oven add the onions.

  7. Put the pan back in the oven and continue cooking for 2 hours basting every 30 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Remove the leg of lamb from the pan and set aside to cool while you prepare the sauce.

  2. Lift out the onions with a slotted spoon and put them in a heated dish or bowl.

  3. Strain the cooking juices into a clean saucepan and skim off as much fat as you possibly can.

  4. Heat the cooking juices and add the sugar and the lemon and orange juices.

  5. When sauce is simmering add the butter in little pieces and let it dissolve while swirling the pan.

  6. Transfer to a heated sauceboat.

  7. Carve the roast at the table and pass around the onions sauce and other vegetables.

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 + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,407 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

  3. Rosemary + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,340 recipes

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

  4. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,485 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of lamb
Forms the main roast; slow cooking turns its connective tissue tender and juicy.
Unsmoked bacon
Melts fat into the meat during roasting, adding moisture and savoury richness.
Olive oil
Carries the herbs and seasoning into the meat and helps the surface brown.
Light italian red wine
Moistens the lamb as it roasts and forms the base of the cooking juices for the sauce.
Orange juice
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich lamb fat in the sauce.
Unsalted butter
Stirred into the simmering sauce, it adds richness and gloss.

The step that matters

Skim the fat from the cooking juices. Fat left in the juices makes the sauce greasy and heavy. Removing it before adding the citrus and butter gives a cleaner, lighter sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, olive, parsley, celery, rosemary, sage, thyme):

  1. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  2. Oreganobetter flavor fit
  3. Basilbetter flavor fit
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, olive, parsley, celery, rosemary, sage, thyme. 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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