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Braised Leg of Lamb

A slow‑cooked lamb leg braised with onions, turnip, carrots, herbs, and spices, finished with a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Braised Leg of Lamb

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Braise the lamb

  1. Melt the dripping in a large stewpan.

  2. Add the leg of lamb and fry for 10 minutes until lightly browned on both sides.

  3. Pour in enough water to partly cover the meat.

  4. Add the onions, turnip, carrots, mint, parsley, peppercorns, mace, and cloves.

  5. Cover the meat with buttered paper and cover the pan.

  6. Simmer in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 3 hours, basting occasionally.

  7. Turn the meat after 1.5 hours of cooking.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Remove the meat and keep it warm.

  2. Pour off excess fat from the cooking liquid.

  3. Thicken the liquid with cornflour mixed with cold water.

  4. Season the sauce with salt and pepper.

  5. Color the sauce with Parisian essence.

  6. Strain the sauce over the meat.

  7. Garnish with peas or the braised vegetables.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb leg
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, moist braising.
Dripping
Fat for frying the lamb, adding browning and savory flavor.
Onions
Break down during braising, adding sweetness and aromatic depth to the cooking liquid.
Carrots
Release natural sugars during braising, adding sweetness and body to the liquid.
Cornflour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats.

The step that matters

Frying the lamb until browned. Browning creates deep savory flavor through the Maillard reaction. Meat that is pale or steamed at this stage gives a flatter sauce, so the surface should be dry and fried in fat until golden on both sides.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, onion, turnip, carrot, mint, parsley, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, onion, turnip, carrot, mint, parsley, clove. 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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