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Lamb Stewed with Peas

A hearty lamb stew cooked with peas, butter, flour, and optional mace, served with boiled new potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 235 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Lamb Stewed with Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a stewpan, add the lamb pieces and enough water to cover them.

  2. Cover the stewpan and simmer for 15-20 minutes, skimming off any scum.

  3. Add a blade of mace if desired.

Make the stew

  1. Add the salt and shelled peas, cover, and let stew for 30 minutes.

  2. In a bowl, mix the butter and flour until smooth, then stir into the stew.

  3. Add the pepper and let it simmer for an additional 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled new potatoes.

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. Wheat + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Peas + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Lamb + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together520 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow simmering in the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the stew broth.
Wheat flour
Thickens the stew liquid as it heats, giving it a fuller body.
Shelled peas
Add sweetness and a fresh, green flavor as they cook in the stew.
New potatoes
Add starch and body, served alongside the stew as a filling side.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter and flour mixture. Flour clumps if added dry or unmixed, so blending it smooth with butter first lets it disperse evenly and thicken the stew without lumps.

Swap the peas

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

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

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