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Haunch of Lamb

A roasted haunch of lamb served with mint sauce and a gravy made from its drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and mint work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 772 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Haunch of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Roast

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Roast the haunch of lamb for 17 minutes per pound.

  3. Baste the lamb with baked flour until nicely browned.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Place the lamb on a hot dish, fat side up.

  2. Pour off excess fat, then add boiling water and salt to the drippings.

  3. Pour the gravy into the dish (not over the lamb) and serve immediately with mint 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 + minttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together772 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Mint + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Haunch of lamb
Provides the main meat, whose fat renders and browns as it roasts.
Baked flour
Browns the outside of the lamb and thickens the drippings into gravy.
Boiling water
Loosens the roasting drippings and turns them into a thinner gravy.
Mint sauce
Its vinegar and sugar cut through the richness of the roasted lamb fat.

The step that matters

Pour off the excess fat before adding the water. Fat from the lamb floats on top of the drippings and, if left in, makes the gravy greasy and heavy. Removing most of it first lets the watery liquid carry the flavour of the drippings without the oil.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, flour, sauce, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, flour, sauce, sugar, vinegar. 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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