Skip to main content
Main

Breast of Lamb with Asparagus Tops

A lamb breast braised with parsley, onions, and boiled asparagus tops.

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

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Breast of Lamb with Asparagus Tops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Remove the skin and excess fat from the lamb and cut it into neat pieces.

  2. Dredge the lamb pieces with flour and place them in a stew pan with butter.

  3. Brown the lamb pieces nicely over medium heat.

Simmer and finish

  1. Cover the meat with warm water and add parsley and onions.

  2. Simmer until the meat is cooked through.

  3. Skim off the fat and remove the onions and parsley.

  4. Finely mince the parsley and return it to the gravy along with the asparagus tops.

  5. Add salt and pepper, and simmer for a few more minutes before serving.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + asparagustop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together566 recipes

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

  3. Lamb + asparagustop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together207 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Onion + asparagustop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,212 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 breast
Provides the meat that becomes tender through slow simmering in liquid.
Flour
Coats the lamb so it browns well and thickens the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the lamb and carries flavour into the gravy.
Asparagus tops
Add a fresh, green flavour and tender texture to the finished gravy.
Button onions
Release sweetness and aroma into the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Brown the lamb pieces nicely. Browning creates deep flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale lamb yields a weaker, less savoury gravy, so the pieces need space and steady medium heat to colour rather than steam.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, flour, butter, parsley, asparagus, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, flour, butter, parsley, asparagus, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Asparagus SoupAsparagus Soup179 recipesAsparagus SaladAsparagus Salad77 recipesCream of AsparagusCream of Asparagus38 recipesBoiled AsparagusBoiled Asparagus27 recipes