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Lamb and Turnips

A stew of lamb breast and turnips cooked slowly with butter, flour, water, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,874 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lamb and Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and thinly slice the turnips.

  2. Wash the turnips in cold water and place them in a colander.

  3. Wash and dry the lamb, then season it with salt and pepper.

Make the stew

  1. In a stew pan, mix the butter and flour, and let it boil for 1 minute.

  2. Add the boiling water and turnips to the pan, along with the salt.

  3. Ensure the water covers the turnips and cook slowly for 3 hours.

  4. After 1 hour of cooking the turnips, add the lamb skin side down.

  5. Cook together for an additional 2 hours, ensuring there is very little water left when done.

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. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lamb + turniptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb breast
Provides the rich meat and fat that flavour the stew during long, slow cooking.
Turnips
Become tender and sweet as they cook slowly, forming the bulk of the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the cooking liquid.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid slightly when boiled with the butter.

The step that matters

Keeping the water level low at the end. Lamb and turnips simmer for a long time, and the cooking liquid reduces as it evaporates. Too much liquid left at the end makes the stew thin and watery, while the water must still cover the turnips early on so they cook evenly without scorching.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

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

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