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Braised Leg of Lamb

A slow‑cooked lamb leg braised with onions, turnip, carrots, herbs, and spices, finished with a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Braised Leg of Lamb

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Brown the lamb

  1. Melt the dripping in a large stewpan.

  2. Add the leg of lamb and fry for 10 minutes, browning lightly on both sides.

  3. Pour in enough water to partly cover the meat.

  4. Add the onions, turnip, carrots, mint, parsley, peppercorns, mace, and cloves.

Braise

  1. Cover the meat with buttered paper, then cover the pan.

  2. Simmer in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 3 hours, basting occasionally.

  3. Turn the meat after 1.5 hours of cooking.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Remove the meat and keep it warm while making the sauce.

  2. Pour off excess fat from the cooking liquid.

  3. Thicken the liquid with cornflour mixed with cold water.

  4. Season the sauce with salt and pepper, and color it with Parisian essence.

  5. Strain the sauce over the meat and garnish with cooked peas or the braised vegetables.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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
Is the main cut that becomes tender and juicy through slow, moist braising.
Dripping
Provides fat for frying the lamb, building browned flavour on its surface.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the braising liquid as they soften.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the braising liquid and the finished sauce.
Cornflour
Thickens the strained cooking liquid into a smooth, glossy sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the lamb before braising. Frying the meat until browned creates Maillard flavours that the long, moist braise cannot produce on its own, giving the sauce depth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, onion, turnip, carrot, mint, parsley, clove):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, onion, turnip, carrot, mint, parsley, clove. 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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