Skip to main content

Braised Lamb Shoulder with Figs

Ask the butcher to give you the lamb bones so you can add them to the pot. They will contribute flavor to the subtly fig-sweetened sauce. If desired, garnish the finished dish with halved fresh figs.

Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lamb and fig share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and 19 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By williamssonoma. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lamb + figtop 19% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

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

  4. Olive + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together23,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Lamb + garlictop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, flour, olive, onion, garlic, red wine):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limeabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Avocadoabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Grapeabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, flour, olive, onion, garlic, red wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).