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To Boil a Leg of Lamb

A leg of lamb boiled with water, salt, parsley, butter, and served with potatoes and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,855 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Boil a Leg of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the lamb

  1. Place the leg of lamb in a pot and cover it with cold water.

  2. Skim off any scum that rises to the surface.

  3. Bring the water to a gentle boil; do not let it boil fast.

  4. Cook for about 1.5 hours from the time it starts boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve with small potatoes and your choice of vegetables.

  2. Top with parsley and melted butter.

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. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  2. Potato + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Lamb + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together520 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Lamb + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,322 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Parsley + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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 cut; slow gentle simmering turns its connective tissue tender and juicy.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth fat coating to the finished meat and vegetables.
Small potatoes
Provide starchy bulk that absorbs the flavor of the serving juices.

The step that matters

Keep the water at a gentle boil. A rolling boil agitates the meat and toughens its outer proteins, making it stringy and less juicy. A gentle simmer cooks the lamb evenly and keeps it tender.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, parsley, butter, potato):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, parsley, butter, potato. 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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