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Celery Stewed with Lamb

A stew of lamb neck chops and celery simmered with butter, flour, and water, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Celery Stewed with Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Crack the bone of each lamb chop across the middle and place them in a stew pan.

  2. Cut and wash the celery, then mix it with the meat.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Roll the butter in the flour and add it to the pan along with the water.

Simmer

  1. Cover the pan and let it simmer slowly until the celery is soft.

  2. If the gravy reduces too much, add a little water.

  3. If the gravy is not thick enough, stir in a little flour mixed with cold water.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lamb + celerytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together371 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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 neck chops
Provide the meat and bone flavour that the stew is built around.
Celery
Softens during slow simmering and adds vegetable sweetness and aroma to the gravy.
Butter and flour
Flour thickens the gravy, while butter adds richness and fat to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering slowly until the celery is soft. Gentle, covered simmering lets the tough lamb become tender and the celery soften without the liquid boiling away or the meat toughening. A hard boil can make the meat tough and reduce the gravy too quickly.

Swap the celery

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

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

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