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 ↓
Iiouse-lamb
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).
If using a large fore-quarter, roast for 1.5 hours; if small, roast for 1 hour.
Baste the lamb with good butter throughout the cooking.
For a leg, roast for 45 minutes; for a neck, breast, or shoulder, roast for 45 minutes; for very small cuts, roast for 30 minutes.
If the lamb was just killed, roast for 1 hour; if killed the day before, roast for 1 hour and 15 minutes; for a very large lamb, roast for 1.5 hours.
Check doneness when the eyes drop out and the skin is hard.
Rub the skin with a coarse cloth and a piece of butter until the crackling is crisp and light brown.
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 + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
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