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Lamb Stewed with Green Peas

A lamb stew cooked with green peas, flour, butter, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lamb Stewed with Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stew

  1. Place the lamb pieces in a stew pan and cover with water.

  2. Cover the pan and simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Skim off any scum that forms on the surface.

Add the peas and thicken

  1. Add the salt and shelled peas, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes.

  2. Mix the flour and butter together, then stir into the stew.

  3. Let it simmer for an additional 10 minutes before serving.

  4. For a richer flavor, mix the flour with cream before adding.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Scrag or breast of lamb
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Shelled peas
Add sweetness and fresh green colour to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light, cohesive sauce when stirred in.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the stew.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour and butter into the stew. Flour added directly to hot liquid can clump. Mixing it with butter first coats the flour particles so they disperse evenly and thicken the stew smoothly.

Swap the peas

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

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

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