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Barbecued Lamb

Barbecued lamb is lamb slices simmered in a butter, vinegar, currant jelly, mustard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Barbecued Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the vinegar, currant jelly, French mustard, salt, and pepper to the melted butter.

Prepare and serve

  1. Cut the cold roast lamb into thin slices.

  2. Reheat the lamb slices in the sauce until warmed through.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast lamb
Provides the meat that is sliced and warmed through in the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a smooth, rounded texture.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce, balancing the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sweet jelly and rich butter.
French mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that complements the lamb and the sweet jelly.

The step that matters

Reheat the lamb slices in the sauce until warmed through. Thin slices dry out and toughen quickly when overheated. Gentle heat warms them through while keeping them moist and tender.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, butter, vinegar, mustard, pepper):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, vinegar, mustard, 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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