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To Roast Lamb

A roasted lamb prepared on a spit, basted with salt, water, butter, and served with mint sauce and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mint and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,998 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Roast Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Wash the lamb and dry it thoroughly.

  2. Skewer the lamb on a spit and cover the fat with paper.

Roast

  1. Roast it before a clear, brisk fire.

  2. Baste initially with a mixture of salt and water, then with its own drippings.

  3. Remove the paper when nearly done and dredge with flour.

  4. Baste again with melted butter until it drops white gravy.

Make the mint sauce and serve

  1. Prepare mint sauce by mincing mint leaves and mixing with vinegar and sugar to moisten.

  2. Serve the mint sauce in a boat and the gravy in another boat.

  3. Garnish with sliced lemon.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lamb + minttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together772 recipes

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

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Provides the meat that is roasted, with its fat protecting and flavouring it during cooking.
Flour
Dredged over the nearly cooked meat to help form a browned crust.
Butter
Basted over the roast to add richness and promote browning.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and richness of the mint sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the mint sauce to offset the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Basting with melted butter until it drops white gravy. Basting keeps the surface moist and encourages browning, while the gravy is ready to serve once the drippings run pale and clear. Adding it too early or too late changes how well the crust browns.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, flour, butter, vinegar, sugar, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, flour, butter, vinegar, sugar, lemon. 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.

More roast lamb recipes

Quarter 15Shoulder 15Forequarter 13with Mint Sauce 7Fore Quarter 3Leg 3 See all 71 →

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