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Roast Lamb

A lamb roast cooked in boiling water, dredged in flour, basted with butter, and finished with currant jelly gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Roast Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Roast the lamb

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the lamb in a dripping pan. Add boiling water.

  3. Cook for 15 minutes per pound, basting often.

  4. Ten minutes before removing, dredge the lamb with flour.

  5. Ten minutes before removing, baste with butter.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour off excess fat.

  2. Make gravy in the pan. Mix in currant jelly.

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. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Lamb + curranttop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Lamb
Is the main cooked meat, whose fat and juices form the base of the gravy.
Flour
Dusted on the surface to help thicken the pan juices into gravy and aid browning.
Butter
Basted over the lamb to add fat, promoting browning and a richer surface.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity that balances the rich meat and fat in the gravy.

The step that matters

Pour off excess fat. Removing most of the rendered fat before making gravy keeps the sauce from tasting greasy and lets the flour thicken the juices properly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, flour, 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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