Skip to main content

A Haunch of Lamb, Larded

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

A Haunch of Lamb, Larded

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut a hind quarter of lamb into a haunch and lard it.

  2. Tie it on a roasting spit and cover it with sheets of fat bacon, writing paper, and two sheets of common roasting paper.

  3. Ensure the larding fat is not pressed.

  4. Roast for 1.5 hours at a good distance from the fire.

  5. After roasting, place it in the oven for a few minutes to glaze.

  6. For the cucumber sauce, peel and quarter the cucumbers, then cut them into smaller pieces.

  7. Marinate the cucumbers with vinegar, water, a little pepper, and coarse sea salt for about 1 hour.

  8. Drain the cucumbers, add a little stock, and boil until glazed.

  9. Add enough coulis for the sauce, squeeze in lemon juice, and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Lamb + lemontop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,127 recipes

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

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

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, vinegar, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes