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Leg of Lamb, with the Loin Fried, Round It

A lamb leg boiled and served with fried loin steaks in gravy, garnished with spinach, parsley, lemon, and gooseberry sauce or stewed spinach.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Leg of Lamb, with the Loin Fried, Round It

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Boil the leg of lamb in a cloth until very white.

Cook the steaks

  1. Cut the loin into steaks, beat them, and fry until golden brown.

  2. Stew the fried steaks in strong gravy for a few minutes.

Plate and serve

  1. Place the boiled leg on a serving dish and arrange the steaks around it.

  2. Pour the gravy over the leg and steaks.

  3. Garnish each steak with spinach and crisped parsley.

  4. Serve with lemon and either gooseberry sauce or stewed spinach with melted butter.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Spinach + gooseberrytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together18 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Spinach + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

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

  4. Spinach + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Parsley + gooseberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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 joint, cooked gently in a cloth to become very white and tender.
Loin of lamb
Supplies the tender steaks that are beaten, fried to golden brown, and stewed in gravy.
Strong gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth as the steaks stew in it.
Spinach
Adds a soft, mild green garnish and, when stewed, a moist side dish.

The step that matters

Frying the loin steaks to golden brown. Beating the steaks thins them so they cook quickly. Frying at high heat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, adding flavour and colour before the gentle stewing in gravy. Overcooking dries the meat.

Swap the gooseberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, spinach, parsley, lemon):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Gooseberrythe original
  4. Orangefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, spinach, parsley, lemon. 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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