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Roast Leg of Lamb

Roast Leg of Lamb is a lamb leg roasted with flour, water, salt pork, and served with gravy and currant and mint jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 623 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Roast Leg of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the thick skin from the leg of lamb.

  2. Dredge the lamb with flour.

Roast

  1. Place the lamb in a pan with 1 cup of water.

  2. Add a little salt pork.

  3. Baste the lamb often, allowing 20 minutes of cooking time per pound.

Serve

  1. Serve with gravy made from the drippings and currant and mint jelly.

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. Lamb + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together623 recipes

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

  2. Lamb + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Flour + porktop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and pork barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,187 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of lamb
The main meat; slow roasting renders its fat and softens its connective tissue for a juicy result.
Flour
Coats the surface to aid browning and thickens the pan drippings into gravy.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that melts into the meat and the drippings.

The step that matters

Baste the lamb often. Spooning the hot fat and juices over the meat keeps the surface from drying out and promotes even browning. Frequent basting also carries flavor from the drippings into the meat and helps the crust stay tender.

“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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