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Leg of Lamb Served As Game

A leg of lamb marinated in sour cream with herbs, then roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Leg of Lamb Served As Game

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Steep the leg of lamb in 1 quart of sour cream with marjoram, sage, thyme, and onion overnight.

  2. Roast the lamb for 20 minutes per pound.

  3. Add 1 cup of sour cream and a small quantity of the same herbs during roasting.

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. Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Marjoram + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

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

  3. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Marjoram + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,056 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

Leg of lamb
The main cut; roasting browns its surface and cooks the meat through.
Sour cream
Its mild acidity softens the meat and its fat keeps the roast moist.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it steeps into the marinade.

The step that matters

Steep the lamb overnight in sour cream. The mild acid in sour cream slowly loosens the meat's proteins over many hours. A shorter soak leaves the lamb firmer and less tender after roasting.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, cream, marjoram, sage, thyme):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, cream, marjoram, sage, thyme. 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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