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To Roast Lamb

A roasted lamb joint served with mint sauce and a gravy made from its drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Roast Lamb

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.

Roast

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Baste the lamb with its own drippings while roasting.

  3. For a fore-quarter, divide the shoulder from the ribs.

  4. Squeeze lemon juice on the ribs.

  5. Cover the shoulder again.

  6. For a showder, score the joint an inch deep.

  7. Rub the joint with butter.

  8. Season the joint with pepper, salt, and sweet herbs.

  9. Rub the yolk of an egg over the joint.

  10. Roll the joint in bread crumbs.

  11. Roast until light brown.

Make the gravy

  1. After roasting, pour off the fat.

  2. Make gravy with the remaining drippings.

  3. Season the gravy with pepper, salt, ketchup, lemon rind, and juice thickened with flour.

Serve

  1. Serve the lamb in a hot dish with the remaining gravy.

  2. Serve the lamb on a clean hot dish and pour the gravy over it.

  3. Serve with mint sauce.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Lamb
The main protein; roasting turns its surface brown and its connective tissue tender.
Egg yolk
Binds the bread crumb coating so it adheres to the joint and browns evenly.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust on the outside of the joint.
Flour
Thickens the gravy by gelatinising in the hot pan juices.
Butter
Adds fat that carries seasoning and promotes browning on the surface.
Tomato or mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury acidity and depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Pour off the fat before making the gravy. Excess fat left in the pan makes the gravy greasy and can keep the flour from thickening smoothly. Removing most of it while keeping the flavourful drippings gives a clean, well-bodied gravy.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, lemon, sauce, butter, pepper, egg, 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.

More roasted lamb recipes

Quarter 11Shoulder 11Forequarter 9Saddle 6Hind Quarter 4Ribs 4 See all 9 →

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