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Shoulder of Lamb Grilled

Grilled lamb shoulder served with a sauce of cullis, ketchup, lemon juice, and butter or tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Shoulder of Lamb Grilled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Roast the shoulder of lamb until three-quarters cooked.

  2. Score the meat in a checkerboard pattern.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Grill and serve

  1. Grill gently until fully cooked and light brown.

  2. Serve with a sauce made from cullis, ketchup, lemon juice, and a bit of fresh butter, or use tomato sauce.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Lamb + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together979 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Shoulder of lamb
Forms the main body of the dish; its fat and connective tissue keep the meat moist and tender as it cooks.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded fat to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and lamb.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and tomato acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Grill gently until fully cooked and light brown. Lamb shoulder is thick and has connective tissue. High heat can brown the outside and burn it before the centre is cooked, while gentle heat lets the inside cook through and the surface brown evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, ketchup, butter, tomato, sauce. 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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