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Drawn Butter for Boiled Lamb

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Drawn Butter for Boiled Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Use the water in which the lamb was boiled.

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour with 1 ounce of butter.

  3. Stir in the boiling water, and boil until the flour loses its raw taste.

  4. Remove from heat and immediately add the beaten egg yolk, stirring well.

  5. Cut in the remaining 2 ounces of butter and add the juice of ½ lemon.

  6. Slice the other half of the lemon thinly and use with parsley as a garnish for 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. White pepper + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, egg, butter, parsley):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, egg, butter, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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