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Braised Shoulder of Lamb

A lamb shoulder braised slowly with bacon fat and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,232 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Braised Shoulder of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Bone the shoulder of lamb and lard it with strips of bacon fat.

  2. Roll the joint into a good shape and tie it.

Braise

  1. Place it in a braising pan with a lump of butter.

  2. Braise gently over a slow fire until browned all over.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb shoulder
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and moist as it cooks slowly.
Bacon fat
Strips larded through the lamb add fat that bastes the meat from within and adds savory flavor.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the braising pan, helping the outside brown and flavor the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Braise gently over a slow fire until browned all over. Low, gentle heat lets the connective tissue in the shoulder break down into gelatin, producing tender meat. High heat would toughen and dry the outside before the inside softens.

“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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