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Lamb Stewed with Peas

A lamb stew cooked with peas, salt, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lamb Stewed with Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Cut the breast of lamb into pieces and place in a pan.

  2. Cover and let it simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Skim the surface.

Make the stew

  1. Add the salt and shelled peas.

  2. Cover and stew for 30 minutes.

  3. Mix the flour and butter and stir the mixture into the stew.

  4. Simmer for an additional 15 minutes.

  5. Serve.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Lamb + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Lamb + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Breast of lamb
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it simmers slowly.
Shelled peas
Add sweetness and a fresh, green texture to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the stew becomes richer and less watery.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour, and helps the flour blend smoothly into the stew.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the stew. Flour clumps if added raw to hot liquid. Mixing it with butter first coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly and thicken the stew smoothly without lumps.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

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