Name: Fore Quarter of Lamb
Ingredients: 1 fore quarter of lamb; 1 lemon or orange; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; 1 large pat of butter

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Fore Quarter of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Cut around the shoulder deeper than the skin.
Pull the shoulder up with a fork to avoid removing too much meat from the ribs.
Squeeze the lemon or orange over the shoulder.
Season with pepper, salt, and add the pat of butter.
Replace the shoulder and cover it, letting it rest for a minute.
Remove the shoulder to avoid cluttering the dish.
Cut off the breast-bones and separate the ribs, cutting them through the middle.
Serve the preferred cuts with gravy.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,165 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lamb + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,232 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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