Skip to main content
Main

To Force a Quarter of Lamb

A stuffed leg of lamb roasted with oysters, anchovy, herbs, and a wine‑gravy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Force a Quarter of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Make a long slit on the back side of the leg of lamb.

  2. Remove the meat carefully.

  3. Chop the meat with beef suet, oysters, anchovy, onion, sweet herbs, lemon peel, mace, and nutmeg.

  4. Stuff the leg with the mixture.

  5. Sew the leg up.

  6. Rub the leg with beaten egg yolks.

  7. Dust the leg with flour.

Roast the leg

  1. Spit the leg.

  2. Roast the leg over the fire.

  3. Baste the leg with butter for about an hour.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Cut the loin into steaks.

  2. Season the steaks with pepper, salt, nutmeg, lemon peel, and herbs.

  3. Fry the steaks in fresh butter until browned.

  4. Remove excess butter from the pan.

  5. Add white wine to the pan.

  6. Add strong gravy to the pan.

  7. Add oysters and their liquor to the pan.

  8. Add mushrooms to the pan.

  9. Add mushroom pickle to the pan.

  10. Stir the mixture until thickened.

  11. Place the leg of lamb in a dish.

  12. Arrange the loin around the leg.

  13. Pour the sauce over the leg.

  14. Garnish with lemon.

  15. Serve.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lamb + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb leg
Forms the main roasted joint, providing the bulk of the dish's meat.
Beef suet
Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping the chopped meat moist and rich during roasting.
Egg yolks
Rubbed on the outside, they help the flour dusting adhere and promote browning.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the stuffing and the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and flavour to the pan sauce built from the browned steaks.
Strong gravy
Gives the sauce body and a deep savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture until thickened. Once the wine, gravy and oysters are in, the sauce must reduce and thicken gently; boiling too hard can make it break or turn greasy, and too little stirring can leave lumps or a thin, watery sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, beef, oyster, anchovy, onion, lemon, nutmeg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Pepperfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, beef, oyster, anchovy, onion, lemon, nutmeg. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes