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Lamb, Creole Style

A lamb dish simmered in a butter, onion, green pepper, broth, and tomato puree sauce served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lamb, Creole Style

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the onion and green pepper, and sauté until softened.

  3. Stir in the broth, tomato puree, and salt; bring to a simmer.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the boiled lamb to the sauce and reheat gently.

  2. Serve the lamb with boiled rice.

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. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Lamb + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together439 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base for softening the vegetables.
Tomato puree
Gives the sauce its body, tangy flavor, and reddish color.
Broth
Forms the liquid of the sauce and carries the flavors together.
Boiled lamb
Is the main protein, gently reheated in the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Reheating the lamb gently. Lamb that is already cooked turns tough and dry if it boils hard or cooks too long in the sauce. Keeping the sauce at a gentle heat warms the meat through while it stays tender and juicy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, tomato, lamb, rice. 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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