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Lamb, Larded

A leg of lamb roasted with bacon, buttered paper, and seasoned breadcrumbs, served with mint sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lamb, Larded

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lard the surface of the leg of lamb with thin slices of fat bacon.

  2. Cover it with buttered paper and place it over an even fire.

Roast

  1. Roast for 20 minutes per pound plus an additional 20 minutes.

  2. Half an hour before it is done, remove the paper.

  3. Sprinkle the joint with bread crumbs seasoned with salt, pepper, and mace.

  4. Allow it to brown until bright.

Serve

  1. Squeeze lemon juice over the lamb before serving.

  2. Serve with mint sauce.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + minttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

  5. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of lamb
Is the main joint of meat that is cooked and carved for the dish.
Fat bacon
Lardoons melt slowly into the lamb, adding moisture and savoury flavour to the lean meat.
Bread crumbs
Form a seasoned crust on the surface that helps the joint brown.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the crumbs and paper brown gently.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty flavour of the lamb.

The step that matters

Allow it to brown until bright. Browning depends on surface heat and dryness; the paper must be removed in time so the crumb crust can colour rather than steam and stay pale.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, bread, pepper, lemon, mint, 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.

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