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Roast Lamb with Rice

Roast lamb with rice is a baked lamb shoulder or leg served with a tomato and rice mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Roast Lamb with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Salt the lamb and place it in a baking dish.

  2. Mix the rice with the tomatoes, finely chopped onion, salt, and pepper.

  3. Pour the rice mixture over the lamb and add 1 cup of hot water.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 1 hour.

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. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  5. Lamb + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together439 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Forms the main protein, which becomes tender and browned during slow roasting.
Rice
Absorbs the tomato juices and hot water, soaking up flavour and setting into a moist base.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity and liquid that flavour the rice as it cooks.
Onion
Adds aroma and savoury sweetness as it softens in the juices.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, rice, tomato, 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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