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Stewed Neck of Lamb

A lamb neck stew cooked with vegetable stock, peas, carrots, turnips, and seasoned with salt, pepper, mint, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stewed Neck of Lamb

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stew

  1. Wash the neck of lamb.

  2. Place it in a stewpan with cold vegetable stock.

  3. Bring the stew to a boil.

  4. Skim the stock, removing the scum.

  5. Add salt.

  6. Reduce heat to simmer for 30 minutes.

Add vegetables and thicken

  1. Add peas or young carrots and turnips.

  2. Cover the stewpan.

  3. Simmer for another 30 minutes.

  4. Mix flour with a little milk until smooth, then pour the mixture into the stewpan.

  5. Stir until thickened.

Season and serve

  1. Season with black pepper, salt, mint, and parsley.

  2. Cook gently for another 30 minutes.

  3. Serve the meat on a hot dish surrounded by peas or other vegetables and the sauce.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Neck of lamb
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Milk
Mixed with flour to make a smooth slurry that blends into the sauce without lumps.
Peas or young carrots and turnips
Add sweetness and freshness, and fill out the plate alongside the meat.

The step that matters

Skimming the stock after boiling. Scum rising from the meat during the first boil can cloud the stock and give it a muddy flavour. Removing it early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting for the sauce.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, flour, milk):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, flour, milk. 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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