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Lamb Browned in Spiced Sauce

A braised lamb shank simmered in a spiced sauce of bay leaf, clove, cayenne, onion, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Lamb Browned in Spiced Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Trim the dried outer skin from the mutton.

  2. Wipe the mutton with a damp cloth.

  3. Dredge the meat with flour.

  4. Dust the meat with black pepper.

Braise

  1. Place the meat in a pot.

  2. Add bay leaf, clove, cayenne, onion, and cinnamon.

  3. Pour in 1 cup of boiling water.

  4. Cook gently for 2 hours, ensuring it doesn't burn.

Serve with gravy and soup

  1. Transfer the meat to a deep platter.

  2. Season the meat with salt.

  3. Pour the gravy over the meat.

  4. For the soup, add 1½ cups boiling water and the drained onion water to the pot.

  5. Cook gently for 10-15 minutes, adding salt and parsley.

  6. Strain the soup.

  7. Serve with a thin slice of lemon.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

Mutton shank
Slow cooking over long gentle heat breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender.
Flour
Dredging coats the meat, helping it brown and thickening the gravy as it cooks.
Onion
Releases moisture and sweetness into the pot, flavouring the liquid and gravy.
Cinnamon stick
Adds warm aromatic flavour to the braising liquid and the meat.

The step that matters

Cook gently for 2 hours, ensuring it doesn't burn. Low, gentle heat with enough liquid lets tough connective tissue in the shank break down into tender meat. Too much heat can scorch the flour and sugars on the pot base and make the gravy bitter, while too little liquid lets it dry out.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, flour, pepper, clove, cinnamon, wine, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, pepper, clove, cinnamon, wine, parsley. 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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