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To Cook Lamb

A saddle of lamb roasted with sherry, allspice, cloves, and bread crumbs, served with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Cook Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the saddle of lamb well with coarse sea salt.

  2. Place it in a large baking pan with 1 inch of water, top side down.

Roast and baste

  1. Baste frequently.

  2. When half done, turn the lamb over.

  3. Mix sherry or catawba wine with sugar, allspice, and cloves, then baste the lamb with this mixture.

  4. Cover the lamb lightly with bread crumbs.

  5. Continue basting until brown.

  6. Serve with currant jelly.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  3. Sherry + curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sherry + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,237 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Lamb + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Saddle of lamb
Is the main meat, cooked whole and basted until browned on the outside.
Sherry or catawba wine
Adds acidity and moisture to the basting liquid, carrying flavour into the meat.
Sugar
Sweetens the basting mixture and helps the surface brown.
Bread crumbs
Covers the lamb to form a crust that protects and browns the surface.
Currant jelly
Serves as a sweet, tart accompaniment to the rich lamb.

The step that matters

Continue basting until brown. Sugar in the basting mixture browns quickly at high heat, so the surface can scorch before the lamb is cooked through. Basting keeps the surface moist and lets the browning develop evenly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, sherry, sugar, allspice, clove, bread):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, sherry, sugar, allspice, clove, bread. 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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