Skip to main content
Main

Lamb Stew

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Remove excess fat from the lamb and wash it well.

  2. Place the lamb in a pot and cover it with cold water.

Stew

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

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

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

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

Thicken and serve

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

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

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

  5. Lamb + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together520 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that enriches the stew broth.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften into the broth.
Potatoes
Add starch and body, soaking up flavor and adding substance to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the gravy by starch gelatinizing in the liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with a little flour moistened with milk. Flour must be smoothed into liquid before adding so it does not form lumps. Its starch swells when heated, so the gravy thickens evenly only if the flour is well dispersed.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

More lamb stew recipes

with Peas 17in Butter 10with Green Peas 8Irish 4with Rice 3 See all 43 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes