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Neck of Lamb and Turnips

A lamb neck braised in water, served with mashed turnips and optional boiled carrots, topped with caper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Neck of Lamb and Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Remove the scrag, chine bone, and skin from the neck of lamb.

  2. Soak the lamb in cold water for 1 hour.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the lamb until cooked through.

  2. Serve the lamb with mashed turnips around it.

  3. Optionally, garnish with boiled carrots cut into shapes.

  4. Serve with caper sauce in a butterboat.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lamb + carrottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together724 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lamb + turniptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

  4. Turnip + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Lamb + saucetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together925 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of lamb
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, moist boiling.
Mashed turnips
Serves as a mild, creamy base that accompanies and balances the rich lamb.
Caper sauce
Adds a sharp, acidic note that cuts through the richness of the lamb.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, turnip, sauce):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, turnip, 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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