Skip to main content
Main

Lamb Haricot

A slow-cooked lamb stew with onions, carrots, and a flour-thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Lamb Haricot

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Brown the lamb chops in a skillet.

  2. In the same skillet, brown the sliced onion.

  3. Add the carrots, salt, pepper, and hot water.

  4. Cook slowly for 2 hours, adding more water if necessary.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken slightly with browned flour before serving.

  2. Garnish with minced parsley.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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 chops
Provide the main protein, whose browning adds savory flavor to the stew.
Onion
Browns in the skillet to add sweetness and aromatic depth to the stew.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body as they cook slowly in the liquid.
Browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquid to give the stew a slightly fuller texture.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for 2 hours, adding more water if necessary. Slow simmering tenderizes the tough connective tissue in lamb, so it becomes soft. Low, gentle heat prevents the meat from drying out and the liquid from reducing too fast and scorching.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

More lamb stew recipes

with Peas 17in Butter 10with Green Peas 8Irish 4with Rice 3 See all 43 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes