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To Cover Lamb with Rice

A baked dish of lamb pieces topped with rice, butter, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,779 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Cover Lamb with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Half roast the fore leg of lamb.

  2. Cut the roasted lamb into pieces.

  3. Season the meat with coarse sea salt.

  4. Place the seasoned meat in a large dish.

  5. If the meat is not very fatty, add a piece of butter and a little water to the bottom of the dish.

Make the rice

  1. Wash the rice.

  2. Place the rice in a pan with enough water to cook it soft, adding some blades of mace.

  3. Once the water is absorbed, stir in a good piece of fresh butter, a little salt, and a scrape of nutmeg.

  4. Mix in 6 eggs, reserving a little for glazing.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread the rice over the meat in the dish.

  2. Glaze with the reserved egg.

  3. Bake until the rice is firm and light brown.

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. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Lamb + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together439 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 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
Provides the rich meat base, with fat that keeps the dish moist during baking.
Rice
Forms the bulk of the top layer, setting firm as it cooks and absorbs the liquid.
Eggs
Bind the rice mixture so it sets firm when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing moisture and flavour to the rice and meat.

The step that matters

Bake until the rice is firm and light brown. Eggs set when heated, so the rice needs enough baking to firm and bind without overcooking. Stopping too early leaves the layer loose, while too long dries the dish.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, rice, egg. 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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