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Hind Quarter of Lamb with Spinach

A boiled lamb hind quarter served with spinach and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and spinach are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,400 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Hind Quarter of Lamb with Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Boil the hind quarter of lamb until cooked, keeping it as white as possible.

  2. Cut the loin into chops, season with salt and pepper, then fry or broil until cooked.

Prepare the spinach

  1. Pick and boil the spinach until nearly done, then strain and squeeze it dry.

  2. Chop the spinach and mix in a small piece of fresh butter, salt, pepper, and a little cullis or cream.

  3. Let the spinach stew for five minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the lamb with the spinach underneath and the chops arranged around it, with fried bread on the side.

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. Pepper + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Lamb + spinachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together300 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 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

Lamb
Provides the main protein; boiling keeps the meat tender and pale, while frying or broiling the chops adds browning.
Spinach
Forms the bed of the dish, with its moisture and texture softened by boiling and then stewing.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the chopped spinach.
Cullis or cream
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the spinach into a creamy stew.

The step that matters

Squeezing the spinach dry. Spinach holds a lot of water. If it is not squeezed dry after boiling, the extra liquid thins the buttery mixture and makes it soggy rather than a stew that holds its shape.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, butter, cream, bread):

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Spinachthe original
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, butter, cream, bread. 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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