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Blanquette of Lamb, or White Stew

A lamb stew cooked in a white sauce of butter, flour, broth, egg yolks, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Blanquette of Lamb, or White Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb and broth

  1. Place the lamb pieces in water and parboil them.

  2. Skim off any scum that rises.

  3. Once boiled, remove the lamb and wipe it with a wet towel if necessary.

  4. Strain the broth.

Make the sauce and finish

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and mix in the flour over medium heat until well combined.

  2. Gradually add the strained broth to the butter and flour mixture, stirring continuously.

  3. Season the sauce with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Add the lamb back into the sauce and cook until tender.

  5. Stir in the egg yolks and chopped parsley 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lamb + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,322 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

Lamb
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it cooks in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Egg yolks
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a creamy texture when stirred in.

The step that matters

Adding the broth to the roux. Pour the strained broth in gradually while stirring constantly. Adding it all at once or without stirring can trap flour in lumps, so the sauce will not thicken smoothly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, flour, pepper, egg, parsley. 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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