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Saddle of Lamb

A roasted saddle of lamb seasoned with sea salt, served with mint sauce and optional cucumber sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and mint work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 772 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Saddle of 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.

Roast

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Roast the saddle of lamb for 1 hour 45 minutes to 2 hours, basting it constantly with its own drippings.

Make the mint sauce and serve

  1. For mint sauce, mix 3 tablespoons finely chopped young mint with 2 tablespoons powdered sugar and 6 tablespoons vinegar until the sugar dissolves.

  2. Serve with mint sauce and optionally brown cucumber sauce and a salad.

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. Lamb + minttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together772 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Mint + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lamb + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together509 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Lamb + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together429 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

Saddle of lamb
Is the main cut of meat, cooked whole and basted with its own drippings.
Sugar
Sweetens the mint sauce and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the mint sauce, sharpening its flavor and dissolving the sugar.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Peppermintfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, sugar, vinegar. 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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