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Lamb Stewed with Onions

A lamb stew simmered with onions, seasoned with salt and pepper, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lamb Stewed with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the onions.

  2. Place the sliced onions in a stew pan.

  3. Trim the ends of the lamb chops and pound them.

Stew

  1. Add the lamb chops to the pan with the onions.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add enough water to cover the ingredients.

  4. Let them stew slowly until tender.

  5. Add a piece of butter rolled in flour.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + lambtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,407 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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 chops
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Onions
Add sweetness and body to the stew liquid as they soften.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the stew a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid as it is combined with butter.

The step that matters

Let them stew slowly until tender. Low, gentle heat lets tough connective tissue in the lamb break down gradually. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and leave it dry.

Swap the onion

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

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

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