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Flavoring for Lamb

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Flavoring for Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Add whole cloves and sticks of cinnamon to the water for boiling lamb.

  2. Boil the cloves and cinnamon in water if roasting the lamb.

  3. Baste the lamb with the spiced water while roasting.

  4. Serve the lamb with mint sauce, garnished with sprigs of mint or curly parsley.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Mint + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,198 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Cinnamon + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Clove + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together576 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, cinnamon, sauce, parsley):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, cinnamon, sauce, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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