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Leg of Lamb with Oysters

A leg of lamb stuffed with oysters and light forcemeat, seasoned with lemon, salt, bacon, and served with a mushroom and oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Leg of Lamb with Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Fill the cavity of the boned leg of lamb with light forcemeat and pounded blanched oysters.

  2. Sew the leg up and cover it with slices of lemon, coarse sea salt, and sliced bacon, then wrap in paper.

Roast and glaze

  1. Roast gently until cooked through.

  2. Glaze the lamb before serving.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare a sauce by combining blanched oysters, stewed mushrooms, boiled button onions, coulis, and the liquid from blanching the oysters.

  2. Season the sauce with cayenne pepper and lemon juice.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of lamb
Forms the main joint that is roasted and carved for the dish.
Light forcemeat
Fills the cavity, adding moisture and a tender, binding stuffing around the oysters.
Blanched oysters
Add briny flavour to the stuffing and to the sauce.
Sliced bacon
Wrapped over the lamb, its fat bastes the meat and adds savoury flavour as it cooks.
Stewed mushrooms
Add earthy, savoury body to the sauce.
Coulis
Thickens the sauce and gives it concentrated body and flavour.

The step that matters

Roast gently until cooked through. Slow, gentle heat cooks the thick stuffed joint evenly so the centre is done without the outside drying out. The stuffing and oysters also need to reach a safe temperature inside the joint.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, meat, oyster, mushroom, onion, sauce, pepper):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, meat, oyster, mushroom, onion, sauce, pepper. 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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