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Spiced Lamb

A boiled leg of lamb seasoned with cloves and cinnamon, served sliced with sweet pickle peaches.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the leg of lamb in water for 2 hours.

  2. Add the whole cloves and broken stick of cinnamon while boiling.

  3. Slice the lamb cold and serve with sweet pickle peaches.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + peachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Clove + peachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Lamb + cinnamontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Lamb + clovetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together567 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of lamb
Main protein; slow simmering breaks down connective tissue, leaving the meat tender.
Whole cloves
Adds warm, pungent aroma that infuses the boiling liquid and the meat.
Cinnamon
Contributes sweet, woody aroma to the cooking liquid.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Quincefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, clove, cinnamon. 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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