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To Force a Leg of Lamb

A leg of lamb stuffed with a mixture of meat, suet, spices, and eggs, then roasted and served with stewed cauliflower and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg 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 ↓

To Force a Leg of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Carefully remove all the meat from the leg of lamb, leaving the skin and fat intact.

  2. In a bowl, mix the removed meat with beef suet, grated bread, cloves, mace, nutmeg, pepper, salt, lemon peel, thyme, parsley, and eggs.

Roast and serve

  1. Stuff the mixture back into the skin of the leg, sew it up, and roast it.

  2. Baste the leg with butter while roasting.

  3. Cut the loin into steaks and fry them nicely.

  4. Arrange the leg on a serving dish with the loin around it and serve with stewed cauliflower and gravy.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the stuffing so it holds together when sliced.
Beef suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the stuffing moist during roasting.
Grated bread
Absorbs fat and moisture, giving the stuffing a softer texture.
Lamb
Provides the main meat for both the roast and the fried steaks.

The step that matters

Stuff the mixture back into the skin of the leg, sew it up, and roast it.. The stuffing must be packed firmly but not too tightly, and the joint sealed well, so it cooks through evenly and holds its shape when carved.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, beef, bread, clove, nutmeg, pepper, 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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