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Epaule D' Agneau Piquee. — Larded Shoulder of Lamb

A shoulder of lamb larded with bacon and spiced with cloves, mace, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, and salt, braised and served over stewed cucumbers with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Epaule D' Agneau Piquee. — Larded Shoulder of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the bone from the shoulder of lamb.

  2. Lard the underside with bacon lardons dipped in a mixture of cloves, mace, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  3. Roll the meat neatly and bind it with twine.

Braise and serve

  1. Braise the lamb and glaze it.

  2. Serve on stewed cucumbers with cream or mushroom sauce.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon lardons
Add fat and savoury flavour that melts into the lean lamb during cooking.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Cucumbers
Provide a soft, mild vegetable base that soaks up the braising flavours.

The step that matters

Braise the lamb and glaze it. A shoulder is a tough, collagen-rich cut that needs slow, moist heat so the connective tissue softens into gelatin. Rushing the braise leaves the meat chewy, and the glaze needs the reduced cooking liquid to set properly.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, clove, mace, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, cream):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, clove, mace, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, cream. 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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