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Barbecued Lamb

Barbecued Lamb is lamb slices cooked in a sauce of butter, cayenne, vinegar, currant jelly, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Barbecued Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut cold lamb into neat, thin slices.

  2. In a deep frying pan, combine butter, cayenne, salt, pepper, vinegar, currant jelly, and French mustard.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat the mixture to boiling, stirring constantly until well combined.

  2. Add the lamb slices and cook until heated through.

  3. Serve on a hot dish and pour the sauce over the lamb.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold lamb
Is the main protein, cooked gently in the sauce just until heated through.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy body to the sauce.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body that helps the sauce cling to the lamb.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
French mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that gives the sauce its tangy bite.

The step that matters

Heating the sauce to boiling while stirring constantly. Butter, jelly and mustard can separate or scorch on the bottom of the pan if left unstirred. Constant stirring keeps the emulsion smooth and evenly combined before the lamb goes in.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, butter, pepper, vinegar, mustard):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, pepper, vinegar, mustard. 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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