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Leg of Lamb

A boiled leg of lamb served as steaks, optionally with spinach.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,025 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Leg of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the lamb

  1. Boil the leg of lamb wrapped in a cloth until cooked through and white.

  2. Cut the loin into steaks.

  3. Fry the steaks.

Serve

  1. Serve the fried steaks garnished with dried or fried parsley.

  2. Optionally, serve spinach on the side or dress it separately.

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. Parsley + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Lamb + spinachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together300 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Lamb + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,322 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
Main protein, cut into steaks that make up the dish.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, parsley. 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.

More leg of lamb recipes

Roast 35Boiled 30Roasted 16Stuffed 7 See all 13 →

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