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Baron of Lamb with Mint Sauce

Roast lamb served with a mint, sugar, and vinegar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Baron of Lamb with Mint Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Lay the lamb in a roasting pan on a bed of sliced carrot, turnip, onion, thyme, parsley, and bay leaf.

  3. Season the lamb with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Roast

  1. Roast the lamb until browned.

  2. Continue baking for 20 minutes per pound in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

Make the mint sauce and serve

  1. Combine chopped mint, sugar, and vinegar in a bowl, and stir until the sugar dissolves.

  2. Serve the mint sauce in a gravy boat alongside the lamb.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Is the main cut that is roasted, so its browning and cooking set the dish's flavour and texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the sharp vinegar sauce, balancing its acidity.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the mint sauce, giving it a sharp contrast to the rich meat.

The step that matters

Continue baking at the lower temperature for the full time. Lamb is cooked by time and temperature together. Roasting too hot or for too short a time leaves the centre underdone, while overcooking dries the meat, so the timed roast should be followed closely.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, carrot, turnip, onion, thyme, parsley, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, carrot, turnip, onion, thyme, parsley, pepper. 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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