Name: Lamb Dressed with Rice
Ingredients: 1 small fore-quarter of lamb; Coarse sea salt; 1 pound rice; 1/4 teaspoon mace; 1/2 cup cream (or more, as needed); 4 egg yolks

Why it works: Lamb and rice work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 439 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lamb Dressed with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the lamb

Half roast the lamb and cut it into steaks.
Season the steaks with coarse sea salt and place them in a dish with a little water.

Make the rice topping

Boil the rice with mace, then strain it.
Stir in the cream and beaten egg yolks, adding a little salt.

Assemble and bake

Cover the lamb with the rice mixture.
Brush the top with reserved egg yolk using a feather.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until light brown.

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.

Lamb + ricetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together439 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Rice + macetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together932 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,009 recipes
Lamb + macetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together208 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Rice + creamtop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,399 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb: Forms the meat base; partial roasting first sets its surface before baking.
Rice: Forms the bulk of the topping, giving body and a soft, absorbent texture.
Cream: Adds moisture and richness to the rice mixture, keeping it tender as it bakes.
Egg yolks: Bind the cream into a custard-like layer and help the top set and brown.