Skip to main content
Main

Larded Cantons of Lamb

A lamb shoulder stuffed with forcemeat, larded with fat, baked, and served with olives, mushrooms, and brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Olive and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,571 recipes. Both carry trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Larded Cantons of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Bone the shoulders of lamb from the inside without breaking the skin.

  2. Stuff the lamb with your chosen forcemeat or stuffing.

  3. Lard the stuffed lamb with lardoons and cover with buttered paper.

  4. Truss the lamb in the shape of ducks.

Cook and serve

  1. Bake or roast the lamb until cooked through.

  2. Heat the button mushrooms in brown mushroom sauce.

  3. Garnish the lamb with olives and the heated mushrooms.

  4. Remove the strings before serving.

  5. Accompany the lamb with brown gravy.

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. Olive + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Lamb + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Lamb + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Mushroom + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,480 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Olive + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Shoulders of small lamb
Forms the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy when slowly cooked through.
Forcemeat or stuffing of your choice
Fills the boned cavity, adding moisture and flavour to the lean meat as it cooks.
Lardoons (strips of fat)
Melt during cooking, basting the lamb and keeping the lean meat moist.

The step that matters

Bone the shoulders without breaking the skin. The skin holds the stuffing and the rolled shape inside. A tear lets the forcemeat leak out during cooking and can leave the joint dry and unevenly shaped.

“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.

More stuffed lamb shoulder recipes

with Sorrel Sauce 3 See all 15 →

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes