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Stewed Lamb Chops

Stewed lamb chops simmered in water, seasoned with salt and pepper, thickened with flour and butter, served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Lamb Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the loin of lamb into chops.

Stew the lamb

  1. Cover the chops with water and stew until tender, keeping covered except when skimming.

  2. Once done, season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Thicken and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy with a little flour, stirred until smooth, and add the butter.

  2. Serve the stew over pieces of toasted bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

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

Loin of lamb
Provides the meat that becomes tender through slow stewing in water.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the finished gravy.
Toasted bread
Soaks up the gravy and gives the dish a base to serve over.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with a little flour, stirred until smooth. Flour clumps if added without being stirred smooth, leaving lumps in the gravy. Stirring it in evenly lets the starch disperse and thicken the liquid uniformly.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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