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To Boil a Leg of Lamb

A leg of lamb boiled for about 1.5 hours, optionally wrapped in cloth, served with butter or parsley sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,322 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Boil a Leg of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the lamb

  1. Boil the leg of lamb for about 1.5 hours.

  2. If desired, wrap the lamb in cloth to maintain whiteness.

Serve

  1. Once cooked, dish the lamb and garnish with fried loin chops.

  2. Serve with plain melted butter or parsley butter sauce.

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 + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,322 recipes

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

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Lamb + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Lamb + saucetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together925 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Is the main cut that is boiled until cooked through and tender.
Butter
Provides richness and a smooth, fatty flavour in the serving sauce.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, butter, sauce):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, sauce. 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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