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Oe White Stew

A lamb stew made with a white sauce of butter, flour, and egg yolks, seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Oe White Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Place lamb pieces in water and parboil.

  2. Skim off any scum that rises.

  3. Once boiled, remove the lamb and wipe off any scum with a wet towel.

  4. Strain the broth.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and mix in the flour over medium heat.

  2. Gradually add the strained broth, stirring until smooth.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Add the lamb back into the sauce and cook until tender.

  5. Stir in the egg yolks and chopped parsley 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lamb + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,322 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour into the roux base.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy body.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, so if the sauce is too hot when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Remove the pan from strong heat before stirring them in gently.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

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