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Barbecued Lamb

Barbecued Lamb is lamb slices cooked in a sauce of butter, cayenne, salt, pepper, vinegar, currant jelly, and French mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Barbecued Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Cut cold lamb into neat, thin slices.

  2. In a deep frying pan, combine butter, cayenne, salt, pepper, vinegar, currant jelly, and French mustard.

  3. Heat the mixture to boiling, stirring constantly until well combined.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the lamb slices and cook until heated through.

  2. Serve on a hot dish and pour the sauce over 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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and helps the sauce feel smooth and glossy.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the sweetness.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body, helping the sauce cling to the lamb.
French mustard
Adds sharpness and a savory tang that complements the meat.

The step that matters

Heating the sauce to boiling while stirring. Constant stirring keeps the butter, jelly and vinegar from separating or scorching on the pan base, so the sauce combines evenly into a smooth coating before the lamb is added.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, pepper, vinegar, mustard. 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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