Skip to main content
Main

Mikced Lamb, with Poached Eggs

A dish of minced lamb simmered in gravy, served with poached eggs on buttered toast squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,372 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mikced Lamb, with Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the meat and mince it finely, seasoning with pepper, salt, and mint.

  2. Heat the gravy in a saucepan until hot, then stir in the minced lamb and heat through without boiling.

  3. Thicken the mixture with a little brown flour and pile it on a flat dish.

Assemble and serve

  1. Prepare buttered toast squares and place a poached egg on each.

  2. Arrange the toast with eggs around or on top of the minced lamb and serve.

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. Pepper + minttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lamb + minttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together772 recipes

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

  4. Lamb + eggtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,204 recipes

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

  5. Mint + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together907 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

Cold roast lamb
Forms the main body of the dish, giving it substance and meaty flavour.
Gravy
Supplies moisture and savoury flavour so the minced meat stays tender rather than dry.
Brown flour (in the method)
Thickens the gravy so the mixture holds together on the plate.
Poached eggs
Add richness and a soft, runny yolk that enriches the meat and gravy.

The step that matters

Heat the lamb without boiling. Boiling the gravy and minced meat can toughen the already-cooked meat and make the sauce separate or turn grainy. Gentle heating keeps the meat tender and the gravy smooth.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, egg. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes