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Breast of Lamb, with Peas

A lamb breast cooked in butter and herb seasonings, simmered in stock, finished with French peas and croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Breast of Lamb, with Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Trim the skin and excess fat from the breast of lamb.

  2. Cut the meat into squares or triangular pieces and dredge in flour.

Brown and simmer

  1. In a stew pan, melt a small quantity of butter and add the meat with herb seasonings.

  2. Toss and brown the meat nicely.

  3. Add 1 pint of soup stock for each pound of meat and simmer until tender.

  4. Skim off any surplus fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add half a can of French peas.

  2. Pour onto a hot dish, garnish with large croutons, and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lamb + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together469 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 breast
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow simmering in stock.
Flour
Coats the meat so it browns well and thickens the cooking liquid slightly.
Butter
Fat for browning the meat and adding rich flavour.
Soup stock
Liquid that simmers the meat until tender and forms the sauce.
French peas
Add sweetness and color, and are added late so they stay tender-firm.

The step that matters

Brown and toss the meat nicely before adding stock. Browning the floured meat creates flavourful Maillard crust compounds. If the meat is crowded or steamed rather than seared, it turns grey and the sauce tastes flat.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, flour, butter, meat. 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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