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Lamb Fricassee

A stew of lamb pieces simmered with onion, peas or rice, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lamb Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Cut the lamb into small pieces.

  2. Dredge the lamb with salt and flour, then brown in drippings.

Make the stew

  1. Finely chop the onion and brown it in the fat.

  2. Add the onion to the meat in a stewpan and cover with boiling water.

  3. Simmer until the bones slip out, then remove the bones.

  4. Strain the liquid and skim off the fat.

  5. When the liquid boils again, add the meat, pepper, and salt.

  6. Add the green peas or cooked rice and simmer for fifteen minutes.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Onion + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

  4. Lamb + peastop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 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 or mutton
Provides the meat and, through its bones, the rich flavor of the stew.
Flour
Coats the meat so it browns well and helps thicken the cooking liquid.
Drippings
Fat for browning the meat and onion, adding savory flavor.
Onion
Browned in fat to add sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Green peas or cooked rice
Added near the end to bulk out the stew and add body.

The step that matters

Dredge and brown the lamb in drippings. Browning the flour-coated meat creates deeper savory flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pale, steamed meat gives a flat, greyish stew, so the pieces need space and enough hot fat.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, onion, flour, 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.

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