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Leg of Lamb with Green Peas

A roasted leg of lamb simmered with green peas and a gravy made from the cooking liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 623 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Leg of Lamb with Green Peas

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Wash and dry the leg of lamb.

  2. Season the leg of lamb with salt and pepper, then dust it with flour.

Brown and simmer

  1. Cover the bottom of a stewpan with bacon or salt pork slices and fry until the fat is extracted.

  2. Remove the crisp fat, leaving the grease, and brown the leg of lamb on all sides.

  3. Add enough hot water to nearly cover the lamb and simmer gently for 1.5 hours.

  4. Shell and wash the peas, then add them around the leg and cook gently for 30 minutes until tender but not broken.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Dust a little flour over the peas to thicken the gravy and serve the leg on a hot dish with peas around it.

  2. Strain the gravy to remove grease.

  3. Add ½ pint boiling water, season with salt and pepper, stir well, and let it boil.

  4. Serve in a hot tureen.

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 + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together623 recipes

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

  2. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lamb + peastop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

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

  4. Pork + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,589 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of lamb
Is the main meat, cooked slowly until tender in its own juices and the simmering liquid.
Bacon or salt pork
Renders fat into the stewpan to brown the lamb in and adds savoury flavour.
Flour
Coats the lamb and later thickens the gravy so it becomes smooth and lightly bodied.
Young green peas
Add sweetness and a tender vegetable texture to the dish, cooked alongside the lamb.

The step that matters

Brown the lamb on all sides after removing the crisp fat. Browning creates flavourful Maillard crust on the meat surface. Leaving the grease keeps the pan well coated so the lamb browns evenly rather than steaming.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, flour, pork):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, flour, pork. 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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