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A Shoulder of Lamb

Roasted lamb shoulder seasoned with butter, flour, and coarse sea salt, served with watercress garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 340 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Shoulder of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Season and roast

  1. Season the shoulder of lamb with butter, flour, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Roast the lamb for 20 minutes.

  3. Baste the lamb occasionally during roasting.

Serve

  1. Garnish with watercress 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. Flour + watercresstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lamb + watercresstop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

  4. Lamb + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Lamb + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb shoulder
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meat that is roasted and served.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the surface brown and stay moist during roasting.
Flour
Helps the seasoning coat the surface and encourages browning on the outside of the meat.

The step that matters

Baste the lamb occasionally during roasting. Spooning the fat and juices over the meat keeps the surface from drying out and helps it brown evenly, while the interior cooks gently.

“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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