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Bbaised Loin of Lamb

A loin of lamb boned, braised with bacon, herbs, stock and vegetables, then glazed and served on stewed vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bbaised Loin of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pot

  1. Bone the loin of lamb.

  2. Line the bottom of a stewpan with a few thin slices of fat bacon.

  3. Add the remaining ingredients and cover the meat with a few more slices of bacon.

Braise

  1. Pour in the stock and simmer very gently for 2 hours.

Glaze and serve

  1. Remove the meat, dry it, strain the gravy, and reduce it to a glaze.

  2. Glaze the meat and serve it on stewed peas, spinach, or stewed cucumbers.

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. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  2. Lamb + carrottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together724 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Lamb + oniontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,407 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

What each ingredient does

Loin of lamb
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow, gentle simmering.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that bastes the meat and enriches the gravy as it cooks.
Stock
Provides the liquid for gentle braising and becomes the base of the gravy.
Young carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body to the braising liquor.
Green onions
Release mild aromatic sweetness into the stock during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Simmer very gently. Gentle heat keeps the stock barely moving so the connective tissue in the lamb softens slowly without the meat toughening or drying out. A rolling boil would tighten the muscle fibers and cloud the gravy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, onion, carrot. 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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