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Saddle of Lamb

A roast lamb saddle seasoned with sea salt, butter, flour, served with currant jelly, vegetables, optional mint sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Saddle of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the lamb

  1. Sprinkle coarse sea salt over the saddle of lamb.

  2. Place it in a dripping pan with a few small pieces of meat.

  3. Dot the lamb with butter and baste it occasionally with lamb fat.

  4. Dredge a little flour over the lamb a few minutes before removing it from the oven.

Serve

  1. Serve with currant jelly and choice early vegetables.

  2. Mint sauce may be served on the side, but keep it mild.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lamb + minttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together772 recipes

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

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Saddle of lamb
Forms the main meat, which the cook roasts as the central dish.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the surface brown as it bastes the meat.
Flour
Dredged over the surface near the end, it helps form a light browned crust.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the richness of the lamb.

The step that matters

Dredging the flour before removing the lamb. Flour added only a few minutes before the lamb leaves the oven needs time to brown in the heat. Added too early it can scorch, and added too late it stays pale and pasty.

Swap the mint

The recipe marks mint as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, butter, flour, currant, sauce):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, flour, currant, sauce. 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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