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Loin of Lamb, Braised

A braised lamb loin cooked with bacon, mint, lemon, stock, and seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Loin of Lamb, Braised

Ingredients

Directions

Braise

  1. Place bacon slices at the bottom of a thick stewpan, then add chopped mint and lemon juice.

  2. Place lamb on top and add enough stock to half cover the meat.

  3. Simmer gently for 1.5 hours, turning the meat halfway through.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove lamb, drain it, and keep it warm.

  2. Skim fat from the gravy and boil to reduce it.

  3. Season gravy with pepper and salt, then heat lamb in it briefly before serving.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Mint + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

  3. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mint + lambtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together772 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Is the main protein, becoming tender through slow, gentle simmering in liquid.
Bacon
Releases fat and savoury flavour into the stock as it cooks at the base of the pan.
Stock
Provides the braising liquid that gently cooks the meat and forms the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty flavours of the lamb and gravy.
Mint
Contributes a fresh, aromatic herbal note to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue in the lamb break down slowly without toughening the meat. Boiling hard would tighten the proteins and dry the surface, so keep the liquid barely bubbling.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Corianderfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, lamb, pepper. 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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