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Fore Quarter of Lamb

A roasted lamb forequarter served with gravy or butter, parsley, mint sauce, lemon, cayenne, butter, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fore Quarter of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Roast

  1. Roast the lamb whole or in separate parts.

  2. If roasting whole, lift the shoulder and add lemon juice, cayenne pepper, butter, and salt.

Serve

  1. Serve with gravy or melted butter and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

  2. Serve mint sauce in a separate dish.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Mint + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Parsley + minttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,198 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meat that is roasted and carved.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping keep the lamb moist and adding flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavour of the lamb.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, butter, parsley, sauce, lemon, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, parsley, sauce, lemon, pepper. 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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