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Stuffed Lamb

A leg of lamb stuffed with bread crumbs, salt pork, herbs, and spices, simmered in a savory broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,075 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stuffed Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Fill the inside of the leg of lamb with a stuffing made of bread crumbs, salt pork, sweet marjoram, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Add enough water to the pot to cover the leg.

  3. Add a dozen or two cloves, the finely chopped onion, and ketchup.

  4. Let it simmer steadily for three hours.

Finish and serve

  1. If the gravy is not thick enough, thicken it when you remove the leg.

  2. Serve a few spoonfuls of gravy over the meat and the rest in a gravy boat.

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 + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Lamb + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together623 recipes

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

  5. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb leg
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking slowly to become tender in the simmering liquid.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices from the meat and salt pork, keeping the stuffing moist and binding it.
Salt pork
Adds fat that melts into the stuffing and the gravy, carrying flavour and moisture.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity that season the simmering liquid and deepen the gravy's colour.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and body to the gravy as it softens during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer steadily for three hours. A steady low simmer tenderises the connective tissue in the lamb without toughening the meat. A hard boil can make the meat tough and break up the stuffing.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, bread, pork, marjoram, pepper, clove, ketchup):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, bread, pork, marjoram, pepper, clove, ketchup. 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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