Name: Leg of Lamb
Ingredients: 1 leg of lamb; coarse sea salt; black pepper; 2 tablespoons melted lard or butter; 2 tablespoons water; watercress for garnish; mint sauce for serving

Why it works: Pepper and watercress work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 983 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Leg of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Trim the leg of lamb neatly and place it in a roasting pan.
Dust with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Rub 2 tablespoons of melted lard or butter over the lamb.
Pour 2 tablespoons of water into the pan.

Roast and serve

Roast in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1 hour, turning and basting occasionally.
Place the lamb on a hot platter and skim and strain its own gravy over it.
Garnish with watercress and serve with mint sauce or gravy.

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.

Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together983 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + minttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,372 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Watercress + minttop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together71 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,165 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lamb + minttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together772 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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; its fat and muscle cook into the tender, juicy meat being served.
Lard or butter: Adds fat that promotes browning and carries flavour over the lamb's surface during roasting.
Water: Added to the pan to create a thin gravy from the meat juices and drippings.

The step that matters

Roast in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1 hour, turning and basting occasionally. Turning and basting keep the surface from drying out and help it brown evenly. Heat that is too low or uneven leaves the lamb pale and dry, while the fat and juices needed for gravy are lost.

Swap the mint

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

Capersfits better
Parsleyfits better
Tarragonfits better
Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, butter, watercress, sauce. 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.