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Leg of Lamb with Spinach

A roasted leg of lamb served over boiled spinach with butter, consommé, cream sauce, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Leg of Lamb with Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Pick and wash the spinach thoroughly, then boil it and prepare as directed for vegetables.

  2. Dress the spinach neatly in the bottom of a dish.

  3. Glaze and prepare the leg of lamb, then lay it over the spinach.

Make the spinach sauce

  1. In a stewpan, stir the spinach with a bit of butter until it begins to fry.

  2. Add a little good consommé and reduce it.

  3. Mix in good cream sauce and let it boil for a few minutes.

  4. Just before serving, mix in the yolks of two eggs, ensuring the dish is hot.

Finish

  1. Garnish the lamb with cutlets as directed.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Spinach + lambtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together300 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Spinach + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the bed of the dish and, once reduced with the sauce, gives its body and green flavour.
Leg of lamb
Forms the main meat, glazed and laid over the spinach to be served.
Butter
Fat that gently fries the spinach and adds richness and flavour.
Good consommé
Liquid that is reduced to concentrate flavour and moisten the spinach.
Good cream sauce
Adds richness and body, thickening the spinach mixture as it boils.
Egg yolks
Stirred in off the heat to enrich and thicken the sauce without curdling it.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat and can scramble if the mixture boils after they go in. The dish should be hot but not boiling when they are stirred in just before serving.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, butter, cream, sauce, egg):

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Spinachthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, cream, sauce, egg. 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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