Skip to main content
Main

Shoulder of Lamb Braised

A braised lamb shoulder wrapped in bacon, simmered with onions, parsley, and broth, finished with a browned glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Shoulder of Lamb Braised

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the blade bone from the shoulder of lamb.

  2. Season the bacon strips with pepper, salt, and parsley.

  3. Use a larding needle to insert the bacon into the meat.

  4. Roll the meat and tie it with string.

Braise

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan over low heat and brown the meat.

  2. Add water or broth, onions, and parsley; simmer until onions are tender.

Serve

  1. Remove the meat, discard the string, and place it on a serving dish with onions around it.

  2. Skim the fat from the cooking liquid and reduce it to a glaze; pour over the meat to serve.

  3. Optionally, add mushrooms 10 minutes 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb shoulder
Provides the main meat, which turns tender and juicy during slow simmering.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that moistens the lean lamb as it cooks.
Butter
Carries heat for browning the meat surface and adds richness.
Onions
Soften during simmering and add mild sweetness to the braising liquid.
Water or broth
Forms the braising liquid that keeps the meat moist and yields the glaze.

The step that matters

Browning the meat in butter. Browning creates flavorful brown crust through the Maillard reaction. Drying the surface and keeping the heat steady help the meat brown rather than steam before liquid is added.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

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