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Pressed Lamb

A cold lamb dish made by boiling, chopping, pressing, and slicing thinly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,165 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pressed Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the lamb

  1. Place the lamb in a pot and cover with water.

  2. Boil until tender, then season with salt and pepper.

  3. Continue cooking until very tender and most of the juice has evaporated.

Press and set

  1. Remove the meat from the pot and chop it like hash in a wooden bowl.

  2. Transfer the chopped meat to a bread pan and press out all the juice.

  3. Place in a cool area to harden.

  4. Slice thinly to serve cold.

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

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

  2. Lamb + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together469 recipes

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

  3. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 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

Lamb
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long simmering and then firms into a sliceable block.
Water
Covers the meat and carries heat so the lamb cooks gently until tender.

The step that matters

Continue cooking until very tender and most of the juice has evaporated. Simmering until the liquid reduces concentrates the meat's gelatin and flavor. If the meat is pulled too early, it will be watery and will not hold together when pressed and chilled.

“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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