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Loin of Lamb, Braised

Braised lamb loin with bacon, mint, lemon, and stock, served in a reduced gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Loin of Lamb, Braised

Ingredients

Directions

Braise

  1. In a thick stewpan, place the bacon slices at the bottom.

  2. Add the chopped mint and lemon juice.

  3. Place the lamb on top and add enough stock to cover half the meat.

  4. Simmer gently for 1.5 hours, turning the meat halfway through.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the lamb and keep it warm.

  2. Skim the fat from the gravy and boil to reduce it.

  3. Season the gravy with pepper and salt, then heat the lamb in it briefly.

  4. Serve the lamb with the strained gravy over it.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Mint + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mint + lambtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together772 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 loin
Is the meat being cooked, becoming tender through slow simmering in stock.
Bacon
Releases fat and savoury flavour into the stock as it cooks under the lamb.
Stock
Provides the cooking liquid that gently braises the lamb and forms the base of the gravy.
Mint
Adds a fresh, aromatic herbal flavour to the braising liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the meat and gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 1.5 hours. A gentle simmer breaks down the connective tissue in the lamb slowly, keeping it tender and moist. Boiling vigorously toughens muscle fibres and can dry the meat out.

Swap the mint

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

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

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