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Delicious Flavor to Lamb

A lamb roast flavored by spiced water of cloves and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Delicious Flavor to Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, add water, whole cloves, and cinnamon sticks.

  2. Bring to a boil and then simmer.

  3. Use this spiced water to baste the lamb while roasting.

  4. For cold lamb, boil the spices in water and use the liquid to enhance flavor.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Lamb + cinnamontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Lamb + clovetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together567 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of lamb
The main meat; its fat and connective tissue add richness and juiciness as it roasts.
Whole cloves
Add a warm, pungent aroma to the spiced water that flavors the lamb.
Cinnamon sticks
Add a sweet, woody aroma to the spiced water that flavors the lamb.

The step that matters

Basting the lamb with spiced water while roasting. Basting keeps the surface moist and carries flavor onto the meat. The liquid mostly flavors the outer layer, so it should be applied regularly during roasting rather than once.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, cinnamon. 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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