Skip to main content
Main

To Force a Quarter of Lamb

A stuffed lamb quarter cooked in gravy with Madeira wine, walnut ketchup, browning, lemon, cayenne, and oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Force a Quarter of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Cut off the flank from the hind quarter of lamb.

  2. Lift the thick part of the flesh from the bone with a knife.

  3. Stuff the cavity with white forcemeat and under the kidney.

Cook and make the gravy

  1. Place the lamb in a roasting pan with mutton gravy and cover it.

  2. Cook gently until done, then remove and place on a serving dish.

  3. Skim the fat off the gravy and drain it.

  4. Add Madeira wine, walnut ketchup, browning, lemon juice, cayenne, and oysters to the gravy.

  5. Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour.

Serve

  1. Pour the hot gravy over the lamb and serve.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lamb + muttontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  4. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb hind quarter
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the forcemeat and gravy.
White forcemeat
Fills the cavity, adding moisture and a tender, savoury stuffing as the lamb cooks.
Madeira wine
Adds depth and a slightly sweet, fortified flavour to the gravy.
Oysters
Contribute a briny, savoury flavour to the gravy.
Butter and flour
Form a roux-style paste that thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour. Flour must be fully cooked into the butter and gravy, or the sauce tastes raw and may turn lumpy. Adding it in small pieces and whisking helps it dissolve evenly and thicken smoothly.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, mutton, madeira wine, ketchup, lemon, pepper, oyster):

  1. Peasfits about as well
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Chestnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, mutton, madeira wine, ketchup, lemon, pepper, oyster. 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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipes