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Braised Neck of Lamb

Braised neck of lamb with carrots, turnip, onion, herbs, and stock, finished with melted meat glaze and thin white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Braised Neck of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Saw off the chine bone and cut the cutlet bones across.

  2. Trim the fat and skin from the neck of lamb.

Braise

  1. Put the sliced vegetables and stock into a saucepan.

  2. Place the neck of lamb on top.

  3. Cover with buttered paper.

  4. Put on the lid.

  5. Steam gently for 2 hours or until tender, checking with a skewer.

  6. Drain well.

Finish and serve

  1. Crisp in the oven.

  2. Brush with melted meat glaze.

  3. Serve with thin white 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Lamb + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together469 recipes

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

  5. Lamb + carrottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together724 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

Neck of lamb
Provides the meat that becomes tender through slow, moist cooking.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aromatic flavour to the cooking liquid.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and body to the cooking liquid.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the stock as it cooks.
Meat glaze
Adds browning and a glossy, savoury finish to the surface.

The step that matters

Steam gently until tender. Low, gentle heat lets the tough connective tissue in the neck break down slowly into gelatin, giving tender meat. Rapid boiling toughens and dries the meat, so keep the liquid at a gentle simmer and test with a skewer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, carrot, turnip, meat):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, carrot, turnip, meat. 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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