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To Boil a Leo of Lamb

A boiled lamb loin seasoned with vinegar or salt, herbs, and served with greens, garnished with parsley and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Boil a Leo of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cover the lamb with sufficient clear cold soft water and let it soak for 30 minutes.

  2. Add vinegar or salt to the water.

Cook

  1. Wrap the lamb in the floured cloth and place it in a saucepan.

  2. Add the bundle of sweet herbs to the saucepan and boil.

  3. Cook for 1.5 hours until done.

Serve

  1. Serve with spinach or French beans.

  2. If serving cold, garnish with parsley sprigs.

  3. If serving hot, garnish with parsley and lemon slices.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Lamb + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,322 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Lamb + lemontop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,127 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

Lamb
Is the main protein; long gentle boiling makes it tender and cooked through.
Vinegar or sea salt
Added to the soaking water to help draw out blood and impurities from the meat.
Sweet herbs
Infuse the cooking water with gentle aroma that flavours the lamb.

The step that matters

Boiling the wrapped lamb. Keep the water at a gentle simmer rather than a hard rolling boil. Vigorous boiling can toughen the meat's outer layers and break up the cloth wrap, while a gentle simmer cooks the lamb evenly.

“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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