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Lamb Stewed with Peas

A lamb stew cooked with peas, butter, flour, and optional mace and pepper, served with boiled new potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,016 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Lamb Stewed with Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the lamb into pieces and place in a stewpan with enough water to cover it.

Simmer

  1. Cover the pan and simmer for 20 minutes.

  2. Skim off the scum, then add the salt and shelled peas.

  3. Cover the stewpan and let it simmer for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

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

  2. Let it simmer for an additional 10 minutes.

  3. Serve with boiled new potatoes and add mace and pepper to taste.

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. Peas + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Lamb + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together520 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Shelled peas
Add sweetness and bright color, softening as the stew cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the stew.
Flour
Mixed with butter, it thickens the cooking liquid into a looser sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with the butter before stirring it in. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps; blending it with fat first coats each particle so it disperses and thickens smoothly.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, peas, butter, flour, pepper, potato):

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

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