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Boiled Lamb

Boiled lamb served with butter sauce, hard boiled egg rings, parsley, capers, and mint sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the lamb

  1. Wrap the hind quarter of lamb in a coarse towel.

  2. Place it in a pot of warm water and boil slowly until tender, adding a little salt to the water.

  3. Remove the lamb and dress it with a nice butter sauce.

Garnish and serve

  1. Cut hard boiled eggs into rings and place them over the lamb.

  2. Add bits of parsley that have been scalded in hot water.

  3. Incorporate capers into the sauce or serve with mint sauce.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + minttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,198 recipes

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

  3. Capers + saucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Lamb + minttop 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

Hind quarter of lamb
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow simmering in water.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the sauce served over the lamb.
Hard boiled eggs
Add a soft, mild texture and a contrasting appearance as a garnish.
Capers
Add a sharp, acidic bite that cuts through the richness of the butter sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the lamb slowly until tender. Boiling too hard can toughen the outer meat and leave it stringy. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue break down slowly, keeping the meat juicy and tender.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Mintthe original

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