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Quarter of Lamb Roasted

A roasted quarter of lamb larded with butter and herb butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chive and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,150 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Quarter of Lamb Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Lard the lamb underneath.

  2. Place the lamb on the spit and wrap it in buttered paper.

Roast and serve

  1. When nearly done, remove the paper to allow the lamb to brown.

  2. Mix butter with chopped chives, parsley, and fine herbs.

  3. Serve the herb butter under the lamb.

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. Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lamb + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,322 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Lamb + chivetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + chivetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Is the main cut that is roasted, and its fat and meat cook through to become the dish.
Butter for larding
Adds fat under the lamb, keeping the lean meat moist during roasting.
Butter
Carries the chopped herbs and melts into a rich, flavourful sauce served with the lamb.
Fine herbs
Add aroma and fresh flavour to the butter that is served with the lamb.

The step that matters

Remove the paper when nearly done. Removing the buttered paper late lets the surface brown. Leaving it on too long keeps the lamb pale and steamed, while removing it too early delays browning and can dry the exterior before the meat finishes cooking.

Swap the chive

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Chivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, parsley. 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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