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Lamb Stewed with Peas

A lamb stew simmered with peas, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,165 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lamb Stewed with Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Place the lamb pieces in a stewpan and cover with water.

  2. Cover the pan and simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove any scum that forms on the surface.

  4. Add the salt and shelled peas, then cover the pan.

  5. Let it stew for 30 minutes.

  6. Mix the flour with the butter and stir into the stew.

  7. Simmer for an additional 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled new potatoes and add mace and pepper if desired.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lamb + peastop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

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

  4. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Flour and butter 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it simmers slowly in the liquid.
Shelled peas
Add sweetness and a fresh, bright vegetable flavour to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the stew becomes rich and velvety rather than thin.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the thickened stew.

The step that matters

Mix the flour with the butter and stir into the stew. Stirring the flour and butter in as a paste, rather than dropping in loose flour, helps it disperse evenly. Lumps form when flour meets hot liquid unmixed, and the simmer time then helps the starch cook out its raw taste and fully thicken the sauce.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

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