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Lamb, Boiled

A boiled hind quarter of lamb served with a butter and parsley gravy, optionally with pickled cucumbers or capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lamb, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Wash the hind quarter of lamb well and rub it with coarse sea salt.

  2. Place the lamb in a covered pot and add enough water to cover it.

Boil and make the gravy

  1. Boil for about 2 hours, skimming off any froth that rises to the top.

  2. In the last few minutes of cooking, make a thick paste with salt and stir in the butter and parsley to create the gravy.

  3. If desired, add sliced pickled cucumbers or capers to the gravy instead of parsley.

Serve

  1. Serve the lamb on a dish, pour the gravy over it, and cover.

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. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cucumber + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + cucumbertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

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

  4. Lamb + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,322 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering in water.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the gravy a smooth, silky body.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and, mixed into a paste, helps thicken and flavour the gravy.

The step that matters

Skimming the froth. Foam that rises during boiling contains impurities that can cloud the broth and taste bitter. Removing it keeps the gravy and cooking liquid clean and well flavoured.

Swap the cucumber

The recipe marks cucumber as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, butter, parsley, capers):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, parsley, capers. 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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