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Lamb or Mutton Roast

A roasted leg of lamb or mutton cooked with tomatoes and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lamb or Mutton Roast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the leg of lamb in a dripping pan.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt.

  4. Pour the tomatoes over the meat.

Roast

  1. Roast for three and a half hours, basting often with the pan juices.

Make the gravy

  1. After removing the roast, strain the gravy.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour and season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Lamb + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together979 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lamb + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of lamb
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and rich during a long, slow roast.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity, and their juices mix with the meat drippings to form the gravy base.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a gravy as its starch swells when heated.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour. Flour thickens only when its starch is heated in liquid. Whisking it in smoothly and giving it enough heat avoids lumps and a raw, pasty taste.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, flour. 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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