Skip to main content
Main

Lamb, Loin Of, Stewed

A lamb loin stewed with stock, butter, mint, lemon, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lamb, Loin Of, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Skewer the loin of lamb and place it in a saucepan nearly its own size.

  2. Add the stock, butter, chopped mint, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cover the pan closely and simmer gently for 1.5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the meat and boil the sauce quickly for a few minutes.

  2. Brown the meat over a fire or on a grill.

  3. Serve hot and pour the sauce over the meat.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Mint + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

  4. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

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

  5. Lamb + minttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together772 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Loin of lamb
Is the main meat, cooked gently so it becomes tender in the stewing liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce as it melts into the liquid.
Stock
Provides the cooking liquid that gently braises the meat and forms the base of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Browning the meat after simmering. The meat has been cooked in moist heat and has no crust. Browning over a fire or grill relies on the Maillard reaction, which needs a dry, hot surface, so the meat should be well dried before it goes over the heat.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Mintthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes