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Stewed Neck of Lamb

A slow‑cooked stew of lamb neck with vegetables, herbs, and a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stewed Neck of Lamb

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Wash the neck of lamb and place it in a stewpan with cold vegetable stock.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim the stock, and add salt. Remove scum as it rises.

  3. Reduce heat to simmer for 30 minutes.

Add vegetables and sauce

  1. Add peas (or carrots and turnips), cover, and simmer for another 30 minutes.

  2. Mix flour with a little milk until smooth, then stir into the stewpan until the sauce thickens.

  3. Season with black pepper, add mint and parsley, and cook gently for another 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat on a hot dish surrounded by peas (or other vegetables) and sauce.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of lamb
Slow simmering turns the tough neck meat tender and rich in flavour.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce as it is stirred in.
Milk
Mixed with the flour to make a smooth paste, adding richness to the sauce.
Peas
Add sweetness, colour and fresh texture to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the stewpan. Flour lumps if added dry or unmixed, so it must first be blended smoothly with a little milk. Stirring it in while the liquid is hot lets the starch swell and thicken the sauce evenly.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, flour, milk):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, flour, milk. 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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