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Crown Roast of Lamb

A crown-shaped roast of lamb with ribs, wrapped in fat salt pork and filled with peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 623 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Crown Roast of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select parts from two loins containing ribs.

  2. Scrape flesh from the bone between the ribs and trim off the backbone.

  3. Shape each piece into a semi-circle with ribs outside and sew them together to form a crown.

  4. Trim the ends of the bones evenly and wrap each bone in a strip of fat salt pork to prevent burning.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the pork and cover the bones with fringed white paper.

  3. Fill the center with peas.

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. Lamb + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together623 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Lamb + peastop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Pork + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,589 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb loins with ribs
Forms the main body of the roast, providing the meat that cooks into the crown shape.
Fat salt pork
Wrapped around the exposed bone ends, it adds fat that helps protect them from burning.

The step that matters

Wrapping the rib bone ends. Exposed bone tips scorch quickly in the oven because they have no meat or fat covering them. Wrapping them in fat salt pork shields them from direct heat during roasting.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Peanutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pork. 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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