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Stewed Lamb with Potatoes

A stew of lamb and potatoes flavored with mushroom or walnut catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and potato work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 520 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Stewed Lamb with Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare the lamb as you would for stewed corned beef.

  2. Add diced potatoes to the pot.

  3. Cook until the lamb and potatoes are tender, about ten minutes.

  4. Stir in a tablespoon of mushroom or walnut catsup just before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Potato + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Breast of lamb or leftover pieces
Provides the rich meat that becomes tender during the stew's cooking.
Potatoes
Absorb the cooking liquid and soften, thickening the stew and adding body.
Mushroom or walnut catsup
Adds a savoury, umami depth to the stew when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Stir in the catsup just before serving. Catsup is added at the end so its savoury, aromatic flavour stays bright rather than cooking off or turning dull during the long simmer.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, mushroom. 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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