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Hind Quarter of Lamb with Spinach

A hind quarter of lamb is boiled and served with spinach and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hind Quarter of Lamb with Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Boil the hind quarter of lamb until cooked, keeping it as white as possible.

  2. Cut the loin into chops, season with pepper and salt, then fry or broil.

Make the spinach

  1. Pick and boil the spinach until nearly done, then strain and squeeze it dry.

  2. Chop the spinach and add a small piece of fresh butter, pepper, salt, and a little cream.

  3. Stew the spinach mixture for five minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the lamb with spinach underneath and hot steaks around it.

  2. Serve the spinach as a dish with fried bread around it.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lamb + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Hind quarter of lamb
Provides the main meat, which is boiled and then cut into chops for frying or broiling.
Spinach (in the method)
Forms the base of the dish, cooked down and enriched into a soft, moist bed for the lamb.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the spinach a smooth, silky texture.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and creaminess to the spinach, softening its texture.
Fried bread
Serves as a crisp, golden accompaniment around the spinach.

The step that matters

Squeezing the spinach dry after boiling. Spinach holds a lot of water. If it is not squeezed dry before chopping and stewing with cream, the dish becomes watery and diluted, and the cream cannot cling to the leaves properly.

“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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