Skip to main content
Main

Breast of Lamb with Bershamelle

A lamb breast cooked with herbs, butter, anchovy essence, lemon, and baked with egg and breadcrumbs, served with Béchamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Breast of Lamb with Bershamelle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the under bone from the breast of lamb.

  2. Blanch the lamb and place it in a stewpan.

  3. Add parsley, thyme, shallots, butter, salt, pepper, essence of anchovy, and lemon juice.

  4. Simmer over low heat until nearly done.

Coat and broil

  1. Transfer the lamb to a dish and let it cool slightly.

  2. Coat the lamb with beaten egg and breadcrumbs.

  3. Broil over a slow fire until tender and nicely browned.

Serve

  1. Serve with Beshamel sauce underneath.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Breast of lamb
Provides the main meat, which turns tender through slow simmering and gentle heat.
Egg
Binds the breadcrumbs to the lamb so the coating holds during broiling.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust when broiled, adding texture to the outside of the lamb.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour through the simmering liquid, and helps the crust brown.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich lamb and balances its fattiness.

The step that matters

Broil over a slow fire until tender and nicely browned. Broiling too fast or too hot can scorch the breadcrumb coating before the lamb is tender inside. A slow fire lets the meat finish cooking while the crust gently browns.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Potatofits less well
  4. Carrotfits less well

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

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes