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To Stew a Breast of Lamb

A lamb breast stew served over stewed mushrooms with sherry and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,176 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

To Stew a Breast of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Cut the breast of lamb into pieces.

  2. Season well with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Stew and finish

  1. Stew in enough gravy to cover the meat until tender.

  2. Thicken the sauce.

  3. Pour in a glass of sherry.

  4. Serve on a dish of stewed mushrooms.

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. Sherry + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lamb + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together450 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + sherrytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Breast of lamb
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing in gravy.
Gravy
Keeps the meat moist and forms the liquid base that the sauce is built from.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce.
Stewed mushrooms
Serve as a base for the lamb, adding savoury flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Stew in enough gravy to cover the meat until tender. Lamb breast is fatty and connective-tissue rich, so it needs long, gentle, moist cooking. If it simmers too hard or too briefly, the meat stays tough. Keeping it fully covered prevents drying at the surface.

“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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