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Stewed Lamb

A lamb stew cooked with lettuce, peas, mint, sugar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Stewed Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the lamb into steaks, removing the skin and fat.

  2. Place the lettuce at the bottom of a large stew pot.

Stew

  1. Season the lamb with salt, cayenne, nutmeg, and mace, then lay it on the lettuce.

  2. Add enough water to cover the lamb and stew gently for 1 hour, skimming occasionally.

  3. Add the peas, mint, sugar, and butter, then cook slowly for another 30 minutes until the peas are soft.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat on the lettuce with the peas around it.

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. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lettuce + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lettuce + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Forms the main body of the stew, becoming tender through slow, gentle cooking.
Lettuce
Lies under the meat, keeping it off the base of the pot and adding a mild, soft vegetable flavor.
Young green peas
Cook until soft in the broth, adding sweetness and a tender vegetable texture.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the broth a rounder, silkier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Skimming during the first hour of stewing. Gentle simmering with occasional skimming removes foam and loose fat that rise from the meat. Letting the stew boil hard can toughen the meat and cloud the broth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, lettuce, pepper, nutmeg, peas, mint, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, lettuce, pepper, nutmeg, peas, mint, sugar. 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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