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Deforce a Quarter o/Lamb

A roasted quarter of lamb served with a gravy made from mutton stock, Madeira wine, walnut ketchup, browning sauce, lemon, cayenne, and oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Deforce a Quarter o/Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Remove the shank from the hind quarter of lamb.

  2. Lift the thick part of the flesh from the bone with a knife and fill it with white forcemeat.

  3. Half roast the lamb.

Braise the lamb

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

  2. Cover and let it cook gently.

  3. Remove the lamb.

  4. Place the lamb on a serving dish.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Skim the fat off the gravy.

  2. Strain the gravy.

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

  4. Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour.

  5. Pour the hot gravy over the lamb.

  6. 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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through gentle cooking in the gravy.
White forcemeat
Stuffs the pocket cut from the lamb, adding moisture and richness to the meat.
Mutton gravy
Braises the lamb and forms the base of the sauce, adding savoury depth and moisture.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and aroma to the gravy as it reduces.
Oysters
Adds a briny, savoury flavour to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when rolled with butter, giving it body.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour. Adding the flour-butter mixture to hot liquid lets the starch disperse and swell evenly. Added to cold or unmixed, it clumps and leaves a grainy, lumpy sauce.

Swap the walnut

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

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

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