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Minced Lamb

A dish of minced cooked lamb seasoned with salt, pepper, shallot, parsley, nutmeg, flour, and simmered in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Minced Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat off the bone and weigh it.

  2. Break up the bone and stew it with an onion and a piece of carrot until a strong gravy is obtained.

Make and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the lamb with salt, white pepper, shallot, parsley, nutmeg, and flour.

  2. Pour the gravy over the mixture and simmer gently, stirring frequently until heated through, but do not boil.

  3. Garnish with toasted sippets.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked lamb
Provides the main meat and bulk of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so the mixture binds and becomes saucy.
Gravy
Supplies the liquid and savory flavor that moistens the minced meat.
Shallot
Adds a mild sharp onion-like flavor that mellows during gentle heating.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. Boiling toughens cooked meat and can make the thickened gravy separate or turn grainy. Gentle heat warms the lamb through while keeping it tender and smooth, so stirring frequently helps prevent sticking and uneven heating.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, shallot, parsley, nutmeg, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, shallot, parsley, nutmeg, flour. 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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