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Dessert

Lamb Stew

A lamb stew with salt pork, onions, potatoes, and dumplings, thickened with flour and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lamb Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Remove all fat from the lamb and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Wash the lamb and place it in a pot with enough cold water to cover it.

Stew

  1. Heat the pot gradually and let the lamb stew gently until partly done.

  2. Add the salt pork, sliced onions, pepper, salt, and raw potatoes.

  3. Cover the pot and continue to stew until the meat is tender.

  4. Drop in the small dumplings and cook for an additional 15 minutes.

  5. Thicken the gravy with a little flour moistened with milk.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Lamb + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together623 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Onion + biscuittop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 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

Lamb
Slow stewing in water turns the tough meat tender and makes the broth rich.
Raw potatoes
Break down slightly as they cook, adding body and starch to the gravy.
Flour
Starch thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy when moistened with milk first.
Salt pork
Renders fat and savory flavor into the stew liquid as it cooks.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with floured milk. Flour added directly to hot liquid forms lumps. Mixing it with milk first to a smooth paste lets the starch disperse evenly, so the gravy thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pork, pepper, potato, flour, milk, biscuit):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pork, pepper, potato, flour, milk, biscuit. 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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