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Lamb, Boiled

A whole hind quarter of lamb boiled with salt, butter, and optional herbs and pickles.

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

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

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

Cook

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

  2. Mix butter with salt to make a thick paste.

  3. Stir in chopped parsley.

  4. Pour the gravy over the lamb and cover it.

  5. Optionally, add sliced pickled cucumbers or capers to the gravy before serving.

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 main meat, which becomes tender through long simmering in water.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the gravy a smooth, silky texture.

The step that matters

Skimming off the froth while boiling. Foam rising during boiling contains impurities and proteins that can cloud the broth and give it an unclean taste. Skimming it off keeps the gravy clear and clean-flavoured.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Garlicfits less well
  4. Dillfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, cucumber, 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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