Skip to main content
Main

Breast of Lamb with Macaroni

A braised lamb breast served with macaroni and a browned flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pork and lamb match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 623 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Breast of Lamb with Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the lamb

  1. Cover the bottom of a broad pot with thin slices of salt pork or ham.

  2. Place the lamb on top, then add sliced onion and sweet herbs.

  3. Pour in boiling water and cover with a lid and weight.

  4. Cook slowly for 2 hours, turning the meat after the first hour.

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil macaroni in broth for 20 minutes, then drain and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Arrange macaroni on a hot meat dish.

Finish and serve

  1. When the lamb is done, place it on the macaroni and keep warm.

  2. Strain the gravy, thicken with browned flour, and boil once before pouring over the lamb and macaroni.

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. Pork + lambtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together623 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lamb + oniontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,407 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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 main meat, which becomes tender through slow, covered cooking.
Macaroni
Forms the starchy base that soaks up the seasoned broth and gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the strained gravy so it coats the lamb and macaroni.
Thin slices of salt pork or ham
Adds savoury fat and flavour to the braising liquid as it melts.

The step that matters

Slow cooking with the lid on. Cooking gently and covered keeps the liquid from boiling hard, so the connective tissue in the lamb breaks down slowly and the meat stays tender rather than tough and dry.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, lamb, pepper, flour):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, lamb, pepper, flour. 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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes