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Roast Quarter of Lamb

Roast Quarter of Lamb is roast coated with bread crumbs, parsley, sauce of stock gravy, vinegar, mint, egg yolk, mushroom catsup, served with green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Parsley and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,198 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Roast Quarter of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Lard the quarter of lamb slightly with salt pork.

  2. Sprinkle the lamb with bread crumbs and finely-chopped parsley.

Make the sauce and bake

  1. Make a sauce by combining stock gravy, vinegar, chopped mint, egg yolk, and mushroom catsup.

  2. Pour the sauce over the lamb.

  3. Let it stand in the oven for a few moments.

Serve

  1. Serve with green peas boiled with a little bunch of mint.

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 + minttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,198 recipes

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

  2. Lamb + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together623 recipes

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

  3. Pork + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  4. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Quarter of lamb
Provides the main meat, which is cooked through in the oven.
Egg yolk
Helps bind the sauce and gives it a smooth, rich body.
Bread crumbs
Form a light crust on the surface of the lamb as it bakes.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the lean lamb as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and mushroom sauce.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pork, bread, parsley, vinegar, egg, mushroom):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pork, bread, parsley, vinegar, egg, mushroom. 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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