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A Quarter of Lamb Forced

A stuffed leg of lamb filled with oysters, anchovy, herbs, and spices, roasted and served with a sauce of wine, gravy, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

A Quarter of Lamb Forced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Cut a long slit on the back side of the leg of lamb and remove the meat without defacing the other side.

  2. Chop the meat with suet, oysters, anchovy, onion, herbs, lemon peel, mace, and nutmeg.

  3. Stuff the leg with the mixture.

  4. Sew it up.

  5. Rub it with beaten yolks of eggs.

  6. Spit the leg.

  7. Flour it well.

Roast the lamb

  1. Roast it over the fire, basting with butter for 1 hour.

Make the steaks and sauce

  1. Cut the loin into steaks.

  2. Season the steaks with pepper, salt, nutmeg, lemon peel, and herbs.

  3. Fry the steaks in butter until golden brown.

  4. Pour out the butter.

  5. Add white wine, strong gravy, oysters with liquor, mushrooms, pickle, and a piece of butter rolled in flour.

  6. Stir until thick.

Serve

  1. Place the leg of lamb in a dish.

  2. Surround it with the loin.

  3. Pour the sauce over.

  4. Garnish with lemon.

  5. Serve.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lamb + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks brushed on the surface help the flour coating set and brown.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich as it cooks.
Butter
Basting fat that promotes browning and flavour on the lamb and steaks.
Flour
Coats the outside and, rolled into butter, thickens the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity to the sauce, balancing the richness of the gravy and butter.
Oysters
Contribute a briny, savoury flavour to the stuffing and sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce until thick. Flour-and-butter mixtures thicken only when heated enough for the starch to swell; stirring keeps it smooth and prevents lumps or scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, beef, oyster, anchovy, onion, lemon, nutmeg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Pepperfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, beef, oyster, anchovy, onion, lemon, nutmeg. 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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