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Shoulder of Lamb Glaized

A lamb shoulder seasoned, stuffed, braised, glazed, and served with sorrel or cullis sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorrel and tarragon share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 75 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Shoulder of Lamb Glaized

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bone the shoulder of lamb.

  2. Season the shoulder with pepper, coarse sea salt, mushroom powder, and beaten spice.

  3. Fill the cavity with light forcemeat.

  4. Sew it up, shaping it like a leg of lamb.

Braise and glaze

  1. Blanch the lamb.

  2. Braise it in a little stock with bards of fat bacon.

  3. Once cooked, wipe it dry.

  4. Glaze it.

Serve

  1. Serve with sorrel sauce or a strong cullis sauce with a little tarragon vinegar.

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. Sorrel + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + sorreltop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together419 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 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

Shoulder of lamb
Forms the main body of the dish, and its meat is what is braised and glazed.
Light forcemeat
Fills the cavity, adding a soft, moist stuffing inside the lean meat.
Fat bacon
Lies over the lamb as bards, basting the meat with fat during braising.
Stock
Braising liquid that keeps the lamb moist as it cooks slowly.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds a bright acidity that cuts the richness of the lamb and sauce.

The step that matters

Braise it in a little stock with bards of fat bacon. Too little liquid or too high a heat can dry out the lean meat before it becomes tender. Keeping the pot gently simmering with the bacon fat covering the meat helps it stay moist while the connective tissue breaks down.

Swap the sorrel

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Sorrelthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, mushroom, tarragon, vinegar. 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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