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Lamb Stew

A hearty lamb stew with carrots, potatoes, onions, and a flour thickener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion 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

Make the stew

  1. Combine the lamb, carrots, onions, and salt in a kettle.

  2. Add 2 quarts of cold water.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer until almost cooked.

  5. Gently push the contents aside.

  6. Add the peeled potatoes.

  7. Simmer until the potatoes are done, about 20 minutes.

Thicken and serve

  1. Stir the flour into a thin paste with water.

  2. Add the paste to the kettle.

  3. Bring to a boil again.

  4. Serve the stew.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Stirred in as a paste, it thickens the cooking liquid into a looser stew.
Lamb
Provides the meaty base and rich flavor of the stew as it simmers.
Potatoes
Soften during simmering and add starch that helps body the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the flour paste. Flour must be mixed smoothly into a thin paste with cold water before it goes into the hot liquid. Added dry or lumpy, it clumps and resists dispersing. Boiling afterward lets the starch swell and thicken the broth evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, carrot, potato, flour. 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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