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Stewed Lamb Chops

A stew of lamb chops simmered in water, seasoned with salt and pepper, thickened with flour and butter, served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,165 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Lamb Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the lamb chops from the loin and trim them.

  2. Place the chops in a pot and add enough water to cover them without overflowing.

  3. Remove any foam that rises to the surface and keep the pot covered.

Cook and thicken

  1. Cook until the chops are very tender.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Thicken the gravy by mixing the flour and butter together, then adding it to the pot.

Serve

  1. Serve the chops on slices of buttered toast and pour the gravy over them.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Lamb chops
Provide the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it is mixed in and heated.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and combines with flour to help thicken the gravy smoothly.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy by mixing the flour and butter together. Flour lumps if added directly to hot liquid. Mixing it with butter first coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly, giving a smooth gravy.

“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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