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To Stew Lamb with Peas

A lamb stew cooked slowly with peas, water, pepper, salt, mace, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,165 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Stew Lamb with Peas

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine lamb pieces, water, pepper, salt, and mace in a pot.

  2. Add young peas and cook slowly until lamb is tender.

  3. Stir in butter 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. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Lamb
Provides the main meat; slow, gentle cooking breaks down its connective tissue so it becomes tender.
Young peas
Add sweetness and fresh color, and soften gently in the simmering liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the stew a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until the lamb is tender. Lamb's connective tissue needs long, low, gentle heat to slowly convert into gelatin. If the pot boils hard, the muscle fibers tighten and the meat stays tough and chewy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Mintfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, peas, 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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