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Spiced Lamb

A boiled leg of mutton seasoned with cloves and cinnamon, served with sweet pickle peaches.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the leg of mutton for 2 hours.

  2. During boiling, add the whole cloves and broken cinnamon stick.

  3. Slice the mutton cold and serve with sweet pickle peaches.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + peachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Clove + peachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Mutton + clovetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Mutton + cinnamontop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together269 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton
The main meat; long simmering softens its connective tissue for tender slices.
Whole cloves
Adds a warm, pungent aroma that infuses the meat during boiling.
Cinnamon stick
Adds a sweet, woody aroma that carries into the meat during boiling.

The step that matters

Slice the mutton cold. As the meat cools, its juices and fats firm up, so thin slices hold together cleanly instead of crumbling or tearing.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, clove, cinnamon):

  1. Quincefits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, clove, cinnamon. 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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