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Chine of Lamb and Cucumber Sauce

A lamb roast cooked on a spit and served with cucumber sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Chine of Lamb and Cucumber Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Tie the lamb on the spit.

  2. Butter the lamb and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

Cook

  1. Wrap the lamb in paper and place it over the fire.

  2. Baste the lamb well while cooking.

  3. Cook for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve the lamb on a dish with cucumber 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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lamb + cucumbertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together269 recipes

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

  3. Lamb + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Cucumber + saucetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Lamb + saucetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together925 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Is the main protein; slow cooking over the fire tenderises the meat and renders its fat.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and promotes browning on the lamb's surface.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and helps draw out moisture to form a flavourful crust.

The step that matters

Wrap the lamb in paper and place it over the fire. The paper shields the meat from direct flame, so heat cooks it gently and evenly instead of scorching the outside before the centre is done.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, butter, sauce):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, sauce. 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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