Name: Breast of Lamb Broiled
Ingredients: 1 breast of lamb; 1 onion; a handful of parsley or celery; coarse sea salt; black pepper; 2 cloves; a little lemon peel; melted butter; bread crumbs

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Breast of Lamb Broiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

Place the breast of lamb in cold water with the onion, parsley or celery, salt, pepper, cloves, and lemon peel.
Simmer until nearly cooked, then remove the meat and let it cool.
Once cool, remove the bones and slice the meat into narrow pieces.

Coat and broil

Dip each slice into melted butter, then coat with bread crumbs.
Broil the slices for five minutes 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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,768 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Breast of lamb: Provides the meat that is simmered, sliced and broiled as the main dish.
Melted butter: Carries the bread crumbs and adds fat that helps the coating brown under the broiler.
Bread crumbs: Form a crisp, browned crust on the outside of the slices when broiled.

The step that matters

Simmer until nearly cooked. Simmering gently in cold water that is brought up slowly softens the connective tissue in the lamb while keeping the meat moist. Stopping at nearly cooked leaves room for the brief broiling, which would dry out meat that is still raw in the middle.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, parsley, pepper, clove, lemon, butter, bread):

Shallotfits better
Carrotfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, parsley, pepper, clove, lemon, butter, bread. 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.

Brown Bread461 recipes

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

White Bread80 recipes

Bread Omelette60 recipes

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Breast of Lamb Broiled