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Lamb, Shoulder of

Roast a shoulder of lamb, basting with butter and flour, seasoning with coarse sea salt, serve with joint gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lamb, Shoulder of

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the shoulder of lamb on a roasting rack over a clear fire.

Roast

  1. Baste the lamb liberally while it roasts.

  2. A quarter of an hour before it is done, sprinkle a little flour over the lamb.

  3. Sprinkle 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt on top.

  4. Baste with a little butter until nicely browned.

Serve

  1. Serve with a spoonful or two of the gravy made from the joint, and the rest in a tureen.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lamb + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lamb + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Shoulder of lamb
The main cut of meat, which provides the body and savory flavor of the dish.
Flour
Helps form a browned crust and thickens the pan juices into gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the surface brown while basting.

The step that matters

Sprinkle the flour a quarter of an hour before it is done. Flour added late has time to brown and form a crust without burning, and it mixes with the meat juices to thicken the gravy. Added too early, it can scorch over the long roast.

“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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