Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Leg of Lamb

A boiled leg of lamb served with drawn butter or parsley sauce and seasonal vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim off all loose fat and cut off the shank from the leg of lamb.

  2. Wash and dry the lamb, then dredge it with flour and tie it in a clean cloth.

Boil

  1. Place the lamb in a pot of boiling water, enough to cover it.

  2. Add 2 teaspoons of coarse sea salt for every quart of water.

  3. Boil for 2 to 3 hours, depending on the size of the lamb.

Serve

  1. Serve with drawn butter or parsley sauce and seasonal vegetables.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lamb + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lamb + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Leg of lamb
The main cut; long boiling breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender.
Flour
Forms a thin coating on the surface that helps the outside hold together during boiling.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and fat that complements the mild, boiled meat.

The step that matters

Boiling time for the lamb. Timing must match the lamb's size. Too short a boil leaves thick muscle and connective tissue tough, because they need sustained heat to soften. Checking the joint's size before setting the time helps the meat cook through evenly and stay moist.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes