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Braised Breast of Lamb

A braised lamb breast stuffed with a breadcrumb and herb dressing, cooked with carrots, turnip, onion, and tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Braised Breast of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Have the butcher remove all bones from the lamb.

  2. Wipe the lamb carefully with a damp cloth.

  3. Prepare a dressing by frying bread crumbs in butter, adding grated onion, parsley, thyme, and spices to taste.

  4. Stuff the dressing into the open side of the lamb, roll it up neatly, and tie with strips of muslin.

Braise

  1. Fry the chopped vegetables in butter.

  2. Heat an iron pot until very hot, add 1 tablespoon of butter, and brown the lamb roll on all sides.

  3. Add the fried vegetables and just enough boiling water or broth to half-cover the meat, then add the tomatoes.

  4. Stew gently for 2 to 3 hours, depending on the size of the roll.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Serve with the vegetables around the lamb.

  2. For the sauce, boil down rapidly for a few minutes and thicken with a pinch of corn starch blended with cold water, or with a little Brown Roux.

  3. Stir, boil for 3 minutes, strain, and serve in a sauceboat, or serve the gravy unstrained if preferred.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, moist stewing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and juices in the dressing, giving the stuffing body and moisture.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the braising liquid, shaping the flavour of the gravy.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it softens in butter and braising liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps brown the lamb and vegetables.

The step that matters

Browning the lamb roll on all sides. Searing in very hot fat builds browned, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale meat gives a flatter gravy, and a dry surface browns better than a wet one.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, carrot, parsley, turnip, bread, onion, butter. 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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