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Leg of Lamb with Vegetables

A roasted leg of lamb cooked with vegetables in a broth of water, beef jelly, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Leg of Lamb with Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. The day before cooking, wash and dry the leg of lamb thoroughly.

  2. Rub the leg with a mixture of salt, cayenne, ginger, pepper, nutmeg, lemon peel, mint, and cloves.

  3. Let it stand in a cool place overnight.

Cook

  1. The next day, boil water, beef jelly, and sherry in a baking tin.

  2. Add the leg of lamb and simmer gently for 3 hours.

  3. After 3 hours, add peas, asparagus, and carrots.

  4. Close the pan and let it cook for another hour before serving.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

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

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

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 cut of meat, which becomes tender and juicy during slow cooking.
Beef jelly
Adds gelatin to the cooking liquid, giving it body and a rich, glossy mouthfeel.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the cooking liquid, balancing the richness of the meat.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. Simmering gently rather than boiling hard lets the connective tissue in the lamb break down slowly into tender meat. A vigorous boil toughens the surface and dries out the meat before the inside is tender.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, ginger, nutmeg, lemon, clove, beef):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, ginger, nutmeg, lemon, clove, beef. 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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