Why it works: Lamb and cucumber work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 269 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Breast of Lamb and Cucumbers
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare and stew
Remove the chine bone from the breast of lamb.
Stew the lamb with 1 pint of gravy until the bones can be easily removed.
Grill and serve
Grill the lamb on a gridiron.
Serve the grilled lamb on a dish with nicely stewed cucumbers.
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.
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Lamb + cucumbertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together269 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 breast
- Slow stewing breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender enough for the bones to lift out.
- Gravy
- Provides moisture and savoury flavour while the lamb stews, and keeps the meat from drying out.
- Cucumbers
- Stewing softens the cucumbers and lets them absorb the cooking liquid, giving a mild, tender side.
The step that matters
Stew until the bones come out easily. Stewing has to run long enough for the connective tissue around the bones to soften. If it is cut short, the lamb stays tough and the bones will not release cleanly.
“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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