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Leg of Lamb, to Boil

A boiled leg of lamb stuffed with suet, herbs, and eggs, served with a wine-anchovy butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 896 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Leg of Lamb, to Boil

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Divide the leg from the loin of the hind quarter of lamb.

  2. Remove the skin from the leg and chop the flesh from one side very small.

  3. Mix the chopped flesh with shredded beef suet, sweet herbs, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  4. Add two beaten eggs and mix well.

  5. Stuff the mixture into the leg, sew it up, and boil it.

Cook the steaks and make the sauce

  1. Chop the loin into steaks and fry them.

  2. Once the leg is boiled, lay the fried steaks around it.

  3. In a saucepan, combine white wine, anchovies, nutmeg, and butter; thicken with the yolks of two eggs.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the lamb 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. Lamb + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb leg
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole and stuffed.
Beef suet
Adds fat and moisture to the chopped lamb stuffing, keeping it juicy as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing together and thicken the sauce as the yolks set.
Butter
Adds richness and body to the sauce.
Anchovies
Contribute savoury depth to the sauce, blending into it as they cook.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce, balancing its richness.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with egg yolks. Egg yolks set when heated, but if the sauce gets too hot or boils after adding them, they can scramble and turn grainy. Heat gently and stir constantly until the sauce coats a spoon.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, beef, egg, pepper, white wine, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, beef, egg, pepper, white wine, butter. 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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