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Braised Breast of Lamb

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Braised Breast of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Have the butcher remove all bones from the lamb.

  2. Wipe the lamb carefully with a damp cloth.

  3. Prepare a dressing of bread crumbs fried in butter, adding grated onion, parsley, thyme, and spices to taste.

  4. Stuff the dressing into the open side of the lamb, roll it up neatly, and tie with kitchen twine.

  5. Fry the chopped vegetables in butter until softened.

  6. Heat an iron pot until very hot, add butter, and brown the lamb roll on all sides.

  7. Add the fried vegetables and just enough boiling water or broth to cover.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, parsley, bread, butter, tomato, pepper, carrot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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