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Roast Leg of Lamb

A roasted leg of lamb seasoned with bread crumbs, herbs, and butter, served with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,609 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Roast Leg of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Cut deep incisions around the bone and in the flesh of the lamb.

  2. In a bowl, mix bread crumbs, salt, pepper, marjoram or savory, and enough butter to make the crumbs stick together.

  3. Fill the incisions with the dressing and season the meat with salt and pepper.

Roast and baste

  1. Place the lamb on a spit and roast it over a clear fire.

  2. When nearly done, dredge flour over the lamb and baste it with the gravy.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Skim the fat off the gravy, add a little flour mixed with water, and let it boil once.

  2. Serve the gravy 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. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Marjoram + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 meat that is roasted and carries the dressing.
Bread crumbs
Soak up butter and seasoning to form a moist dressing that fills the incisions.
Butter
Binds the crumbs together and adds richness and moisture to the dressing.
Flour
Thickens the gravy and helps create a browned crust when dredged over the lamb.

The step that matters

Dredging flour and basting near the end of roasting. Flour dusted onto the surface and basted with gravy browns and forms a crust. Adding it too early can burn, while adding it too late leaves the surface pale and the coating uneven.

Swap the marjoram

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Marjoramthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, bread, pepper, butter, 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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