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Braised Neck of Lamb

A slow‑cooked lamb neck braised with vegetables, bacon, herbs, and stock, finished with a glaze and white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the lamb

  1. Remove the chine bone and cut the cutlet bones across the neck of lamb.

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

Braise

  1. In a saucepan, fry the bacon until crisp.

  2. Add the sliced vegetables and cook for a few minutes.

  3. Pour the stock into the saucepan and place the neck of lamb on top.

  4. Cover with a buttered paper and put on the lid.

  5. Steam gently for two hours or until tender.

  6. Check tenderness with a skewer.

Finish and serve

  1. Drain well, then crisp in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  2. Brush with melted meat glaze and serve with a little 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

Lamb neck
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and rich during slow, moist cooking.
Bacon
Its rendered fat adds savoury flavour to the pan and the vegetables cooked in it.
Stock
Provides moisture and body for gentle steaming, and flavour for the braising liquid.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, adding aromatic depth to the braising base.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and aroma to the braising base.

The step that matters

Steaming until tender. Gentle, covered cooking breaks down the connective tissue in neck meat slowly. Cooking too hot or too briefly leaves it tough, so test with a skewer before moving on.

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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