Name: Cold Roast Lamb As a Salmi
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon butter; ½ tablespoon onion, chopped; thin slices of cold roast lamb; coarse sea salt, to taste; black pepper, to taste; 1 cup brown sauce or brown gravy; prepared sauce of your choice; toast points, for garnish; sliced mushrooms or olives, optional

Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Cold Roast Lamb As a Salmi

Ingredients

1 tablespoon butter
½ tablespoon onion, chopped
thin slices of cold roast lamb
coarse sea salt, to taste
black pepper, to taste
1 cup brown sauce or brown gravy
prepared sauce of your choice
toast points, for garnish
sliced mushrooms or olives, optional

Directions

Make the sauce and lamb

Melt butter over medium heat in a skillet and sauté onion for 5 minutes.
Add lamb slices, seasoning with salt and pepper.
Pour in the brown sauce and any prepared sauce you prefer.

Serve

Arrange the meat lengthwise on a platter, pour sauce around it, and garnish with toast points.
Optionally add sliced mushrooms or olives.

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.

Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,626 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,165 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

Thin slices of cold roast lamb: Provides the main meat and substance of the dish.
1 cup brown sauce or brown gravy: Adds savory depth and moisture to the sliced lamb.
Butter: Adds fat and richness when it cooks the onion.
Onion: Adds aroma and mild sweetness as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Adding the lamb to the sauce. Cold lamb is already cooked, so it should only be heated gently until warmed through. Prolonged simmering in the sauce can toughen the meat and dry its edges.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, lamb, pepper, sauce, mushroom):

Capsicumfits better
Tomatofits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lamb, pepper, sauce, mushroom. 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.

Mushroom Soup60 recipes

Tomato Soup526 recipes

Brown Bread461 recipes

Mutton Broth292 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Cold Roast Lamb As a Salmi