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Roast Lamb

Roast lamb shoulder seasoned with pepper, salt, mint, butter, and flour, baked and served with a gravy made from pan drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Roast Lamb

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the lamb

  1. Remove the shoulder blade and leg bone from the lamb.

  2. Sponge the lamb and rub inside and out with pepper, salt, and mint.

  3. Rub soft butter on the outside and dust with flour.

Roast

  1. Place in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes or until the flour is brown.

  2. Reduce the heat and baste with dripping from the pan.

  3. Turn the lamb after 45 minutes and roast for 1 hour and 20 minutes for a 6-pound shoulder.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. For gravy, drain fat from the dripping pan, add 2 tablespoons flour, and brown well.

  2. Add 1 pint of water from boiled bones and rub smooth.

  3. Season with more salt and pepper if needed, and add 1 tablespoon lemon juice.

  4. Strain and serve in a hot sauce bowl.

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. Mint + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

  3. Lamb + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + minttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 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 shoulder
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and juicy as it roasts.
Soft butter
Adds fat that helps the outside brown and stay moist during roasting.
Flour
Dusted on the outside it browns in the oven, and in the gravy it thickens the liquid.
Dripping
Fat from the pan used for basting, adding richness and helping the surface brown.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Brown the flour in the gravy. Browning the flour in the fat before adding liquid cooks out raw starch taste and builds color and flavor. Adding liquid too early leaves lumps and a pale, floury gravy.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, butter, flour, beef, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, butter, flour, beef, lemon. 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.

More roast lamb recipes

Quarter 15Shoulder 15Forequarter 13with Mint Sauce 7Fore Quarter 3Leg 3 See all 71 →

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