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Forequarter of Lamb

A roasted forequarter of lamb served with butter, lemon, cayenne, gravy, and mint sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Forequarter of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Roast

  1. Roast the forequarter of lamb, basting carefully, ensuring it is properly jointed.

  2. When cooked, loosen the shoulder from the rest of the joint.

Finish and serve

  1. Place a lump of butter under the shoulder.

  2. Squeeze lemon juice over the butter and sprinkle with cayenne pepper.

  3. Serve with gravy and mint sauce.

  4. Have a second hot dish ready for the shoulder.

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. Pepper + minttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lamb + minttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together772 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the rich, savoury meat flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, moistening the shoulder as it melts over the meat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty butter and lamb.

The step that matters

Basting the lamb while it roasts. Regular basting moistens the surface and helps keep the lean meat from drying out during long roasting, while the fat renders and browns the outside.

Swap the mint

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

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

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