Name: Roast Lamb
Ingredients: 1 young lamb; ½ cup vinegar; 3 heaped tablespoons fresh mint, chopped; 2 tablespoons sugar

Why it works: Lamb and mint work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 772 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Roast Lamb

Ingredients

1 young lamb
½ cup vinegar
3 heaped tablespoons fresh mint, chopped
2 tablespoons sugar

Directions

Roast the lamb

Roast the young lamb thoroughly until cooked.
Prepare the gravy in the pan used for roasting the lamb.

Make the mint sauce

For the mint sauce, wash and dry the mint, then chop it finely.
Mix the chopped mint with sugar and let it sit for 15 minutes.
Pour the vinegar over the mint mixture and stir well.

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.

Lamb + minttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together772 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Vinegar + minttop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,376 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Lamb + vinegartop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together509 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Lamb + sugartop 32% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together429 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Young lamb: Is the main protein that is cooked through by roasting.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar in the mint sauce.
Fresh mint: Provides the aromatic herb flavour of the sauce.
Sugar: Sweetens the mint sauce and softens the sharp taste of the vinegar.