Skip to main content
Main

Lamb, Loin Of, Braised

A braised lamb loin cooked with bacon, stock, carrots, onions, mace, parsley, thyme, salt, and peppercorns.

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

Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

Lamb, Loin Of, Braised

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skewer down the flap of the loin of lamb and cover it with slices of fat bacon.

  2. Place the lamb in a braising pan or saucepan that fits it closely.

Braise

  1. Pour 2 cups of good stock over the lamb.

  2. Add the young carrots, young onions, mace, parsley, thyme, salt, and peppercorns.

  3. Simmer gently for about 2 hours until the meat is cooked through.

Glaze and serve

  1. Remove the lamb, drain, and dry it.

  2. Reduce the sauce to a glaze and brush it over the meat.

  3. Serve the lamb on a hot dish with green peas, spinach, or asparagus.

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. Parsley + thymetop 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 + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 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 loin
Is the main meat, becoming tender and moist as it braises slowly in liquid.
Fat bacon
Bastes the lamb with rendered fat, adding moisture and savoury flavour during cooking.
Good stock
Provides the braising liquid, carrying flavour into the meat and forming the base of the sauce.
Young carrots
Add gentle sweetness and flavour to the braising liquid and sauce.
Young onions
Contribute savoury depth and aroma to the braising liquid and sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. A gentle simmer keeps the liquid below a hard boil, so the lamb's connective tissue softens slowly without the meat toughening or drying out. Vigorous boiling tightens muscle fibres and can make the sauce cloudy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes