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A Nice Ragout From Cold Lamb

A ragout made from cold lamb pieces stewed with bacon, mutton gravy, herbs, spices, oysters, port wine, mushrooms, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

A Nice Ragout From Cold Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Remove the lamb from the bones and cut it into convenient pieces.

  2. Lard the lamb with the fried bacon and stew it lightly in mutton gravy until covered.

  3. Season with sweet herbs, pepper, coarse sea salt, and spice.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain off the gravy, keeping the meat hot.

  2. Add oysters, port wine, mushrooms, and butter rolled in flour to the gravy.

  3. Add the juice of half a lemon and boil together for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the lamb 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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Lamb + muttontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

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

  3. Port wine + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together570 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  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

Cold lamb
Forms the bulk of the dish as the meat that is stewed and then coated in sauce.
Bacon
Adds salty, savoury fat and flavour as it is larded into the lamb.
Butter rolled in flour
Flour thickens the gravy and butter adds richness to the sauce.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the sauce.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce after adding the lemon juice. Boiling the sauce for a few minutes after adding the butter and flour lets the flour fully thicken it and cooks the oysters and wine, while the lemon juice adds acidity to balance the richness.

“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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