Skip to main content
Main

Quarter of Lamb Forced

Stuffed leg of lamb with marrow, suet, oysters, anchovy, onion, herbs, lemon peel, mace, nutmeg, eggs, and a sauce of wine, gravy, mushrooms, and pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Quarter of Lamb Forced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Cut a long slit in the leg of lamb and remove the meat without defacing the front.

  2. Chop the meat small with marrow, beef suet, oysters, anchovy, onion, sweet herbs, lemon peel, mace, and nutmeg. Beat all together in a mortar.

  3. Stuff the leg back into its original shape. Sew it up.

  4. Rub the leg with yolks of eggs.

Roast the leg

  1. Roast for 1 hour, basting with butter.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Cut the loin into steaks.

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

  3. Fry the steaks in fresh butter until brown. Pour out the butter.

  4. Add ½ cup white wine. Add 1 cup strong gravy. Add ½ cup oysters with their liquor. Add mushrooms. Add a spoonful of their pickle. Add butter rolled in flour. Add the yolk of an egg. Stir until thick.

  5. Place the leg of lamb in a dish. Arrange the loin around it. Pour the sauce over. Garnish with lemon.

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 bind the stuffing and, brushed on the outside, help the surface brown.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich during roasting.
Marrow
Adds richness and fat that keeps the stuffing moist.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to both the stuffing and the sauce.
Butter
Carries flavour and browning in basting and frying, and thickens the sauce with flour.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with the egg yolk. Adding egg yolk to a hot sauce can scramble it. Stir steadily over gentle heat and keep the sauce below a simmer so it thickens smoothly.

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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes