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Roast Quarter of Lamb

A roasted quarter of lamb finished with bacon, breadcrumbs, and a lemon‑egg glaze, served with mint sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Quarter 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. Trim the joint and skewer 3 or 4 slices of bacon onto the outer side.

  2. Brush ½ cup clarified butter over the inner part.

  3. Strew a thick covering of finely grated bread crumbs seasoned with pepper, salt, and minced parsley on top.

Roast and serve

  1. Put in the oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. When nearly done, remove the bacon and baste the meat with the beaten egg yolk mixed with gravy.

  3. Sprinkle more bread crumbs over it and let it remain until nicely browned.

  4. If desired, squeeze the juice of 1 lemon over it and serve with mint sauce.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + minttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,198 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 quarter
Forms the main joint of meat that the dish is built around.
Bacon
Bastes the lean meat with its fat as it roasts, adding savory flavor.
Clarified butter
Carries heat evenly and helps the surface brown richly.
Bread crumbs
Form a crust that holds seasoning and browns during roasting.
Egg yolk
Mixed with gravy and brushed on, it helps the crumb coating bind and brown.

The step that matters

Basting with the egg yolk and gravy. Add this near the end, after the bacon is removed. Added too early, the egg yolk can overbrown or scorch before the lamb is cooked through.

“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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