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Lamb Stewed with Peas

A lamb stew cooked with peas, salt, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lamb Stewed with Peas

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the lamb pieces in a stew pan and cover with water.

  2. Cover the pan and simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove any scum that forms on the surface.

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

  5. Mix the flour with the butter and stir into the stew.

  6. Let it simmer for an additional 10 minutes and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lamb + peastop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

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

  3. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Lamb + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Lamb + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

Breast of lamb
Provides the main protein and rich meaty flavor that the stew is built around.
Shelled peas
Add sweetness and a fresh, tender vegetable texture to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light, smooth sauce as it simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce, carrying flavor.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with the butter before stirring in. Flour stirred straight into hot liquid clumps into lumps that never fully dissolve. Blending it with fat first coats each particle so it disperses evenly and thickens smoothly.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

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