Name: Barbecued Lamb
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons butter; 1 tablespoon vinegar; ½ cup currant jelly; 1 teaspoon French mustard; salt to taste; pepper to taste; cold roast lamb

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Barbecued Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Cut cold roast lamb into thin slices.
Melt butter in a saucepan, then add vinegar, currant jelly, French mustard, salt, and pepper to the melted butter.
Reheat the lamb slices in the sauce until warmed through.

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.

Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + lambtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,165 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together693 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Currant jelly: Provides sweetness and body to the sauce, balancing the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the sauce.
Butter: Melts to form the fat base of the sauce, adding richness and smooth mouthfeel.
Cold roast lamb: Serves as the main protein, gently rewarmed in the sauce.

Swap the currant

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

Lemonfits better
Limefits better
Cherryfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, mustard, pepper, lamb. 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.