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Lamb Stew

A hearty stew of lamb, potatoes, carrot, parsley, celery, and onion simmered in water with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Lamb Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stew

  1. Cover the lamb with cold water in a pot.

  2. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

Cook and finish

  1. Add pepper, salt, potatoes, carrot, parsley, celery, and onion.

  2. Cook until the meat and potatoes are tender.

  3. Add more parsley and thicken the stew slightly 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Lamb
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long simmering in liquid.
Potatoes
Absorb cooking liquid and soften, adding body and starch that lightly thickens the stew.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and a firm texture that holds up during simmering.
Onion
Builds savoury depth as its sugars and flavour compounds release into the broth.

The step that matters

Skim off the foam after boiling. Foam is made of denatured proteins and impurities that rise from the meat. Removing it keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting instead of greyish and scummy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, potato, carrot, parsley, celery. 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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