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Stewed Leg of Lamb

A slow‑cooked lamb leg stewed with onions, carrot, herbs, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Stewed Leg of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the leg of lamb in a kettle just large enough for it.

  2. Add onions, carrot, salt, pepper, cloves, sweet herbs, and stock.

  3. Cover the stewpan.

Stew

  1. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

  2. Check the meat after 1.5 hours.

  3. If the meat is tender, stop cooking.

  4. Let the meat cool.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Strain the gravy.

  2. Remove the fat from the gravy.

  3. Reduce the gravy to about 1 pint by boiling without a lid.

  4. Pour the gravy over the meat and serve.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Stock
Provides the liquid that cooks the meat and forms the base of the gravy.
Onions
Add savoury flavour and sweetness to the stock that becomes the gravy.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Simmering gently with the lid on. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue in the lamb break down slowly, giving tender meat. Boiling hard toughens muscle fibres and can make the meat dry and stringy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, carrot, pepper, clove. 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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