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Eoast Leg or Lamb

A roast hind quarter of lamb served with caper, pickle, or mint sauce, optionally stuffed with mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and potato work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 520 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Eoast Leg or 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.

Roast the lamb

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Roast the hind quarter of lamb until well done on the outside and pink within.

Serve

  1. Serve steaming hot with caper, pickle, or mint sauce.

  2. For leftovers, carve the lamb and stuff the cut-out space with boiled mashed potatoes.

  3. Return to the oven until thoroughly hot.

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 + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together520 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Lamb + minttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together772 recipes

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

  3. Mint + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together363 recipes

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

  4. Lamb + saucetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together925 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

  5. Sauce + potatotop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hind quarter of lamb
Is the main cut of meat, cooked until browned outside and pink inside.
Boiled mashed potatoes
Fill the carved cavity for leftovers, adding moisture and bulk to the reheated dish.

The step that matters

Roasting the lamb to the right doneness. Lamb is easy to overcook, and the inside can dry out while the outside browns. Checking the centre keeps it pink and juicy rather than tough and dry.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, sauce, potato. 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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