Skip to main content
Main

A Nice Ragout From Cold Lamb

A ragout made from cold lamb pieces stewed with bacon, mutton gravy, herbs, spices, oysters, port wine, mushrooms, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

A Nice Ragout From Cold Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Remove the lamb from the bones and cut it into convenient pieces.

  2. Lard the lamb with the fried bacon and stew it lightly in mutton gravy until covered.

  3. Season with sweet herbs, pepper, coarse sea salt, and spice.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain off the gravy, keeping the meat hot.

  2. Add oysters, port wine, mushrooms, and butter rolled in flour to the gravy.

  3. Add the lemon juice and boil together for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the lamb 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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Lamb + muttontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Port wine + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together570 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold lamb
Forms the bulk of the ragout, providing the meat that the sauce coats.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour as it is larded into the lamb.
Butter
Rolled in flour, it thickens the gravy into a smooth, glossy sauce.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce as it reduces.
Oysters
Contribute a briny, savoury flavour that enriches the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and balances the fat.

The step that matters

Adding the butter rolled in flour to the gravy. Flour must be fully dispersed in the hot liquid, or it forms lumps. Boiling for a few minutes after adding it cooks out the raw flour taste and lets the sauce thicken evenly.

“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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipes