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Lamb Stew

A stew of lamb and pork with onions, potatoes, and dumplings, thickened with flour and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lamb Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Remove the fat from the lamb and cut it into small squares.

  2. Place the lamb in a stew pan and cover it with water. Heat slowly.

  3. When the lamb is partly cooked, add the sliced pork, onions, pepper, salt, and cut-up potatoes.

  4. Cover and continue to stew until the meat is tender.

Dumplings and serving

  1. Drop in a few small dumplings and stew for an additional 15 minutes.

  2. Thicken the gravy with a little flour moistened with milk 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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Lamb + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together623 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Slow stewing turns its connective tissue tender, giving the meat a soft texture.
Pork
Adds rich meat flavor and fat that enriches the broth as it stews.
Potatoes
Soften during stewing, thickening the liquid slightly and adding body.
Flour
Starch thickens the gravy when it is heated in the liquid.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding savory depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stewing until the meat is tender. Lamb and pork need long, gentle simmering so connective tissue breaks down. Cooking too fast or too briefly leaves the meat tough and chewy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pork, pepper, potato, flour, milk. 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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