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Roast Lamb

Roast lamb is a leg of lamb seasoned with pepper, flour, and sea salt, roasted and then thickened with pan juices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,165 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Roast Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Roast the lamb

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

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

  3. Sprinkle pepper, flour, and coarse sea salt on the lamb in that order.

  4. Roast until the flour is brown.

  5. Add water and baste the lamb often.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the meat from the pan.

  2. Place the pan on the stove.

  3. Mix flour with a little water and pour the mixture into the pan juices.

  4. Stir constantly until thickened.

  5. Strain the sauce if it is lumpy.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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
Is the main cut of meat that is roasted and carved for the dish.
Flour
Coats the surface and browns in the oven, then thickens the pan juices into a sauce.
Water
Keeps the pan juices moist for basting and loosens them for the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the flour and water mixture constantly until thickened. Flour starch swells and clumps when it meets hot liquid unless it is kept moving. Constant stirring spreads the starch evenly, giving a smooth, thickened sauce rather than lumps.

“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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