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Fricassee of Lamb

A lamb stew cooked with onion, garlic cloves, bay leaf, butter, and water, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Fricassee of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the lamb

  1. Season the lamb pieces with salt and pepper.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the lamb, onion, cloves, bay leaf, and butter.

  3. Cover the saucepan and steam gently for 30 minutes, shaking occasionally to prevent sticking.

  4. Add the boiling water, cover again, and boil gently for 1 hour.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Strain the sauce and thicken it by mixing the flour with a little cold water before adding it.

  2. Boil for a moment longer and serve, adding capers if desired.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + caperstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together412 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long gentle cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour as the lamb steams.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce.
Capers
Add a sharp, salty acidity that cuts the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cold water before it goes into hot liquid, because dry flour added directly forms lumps. Boiling briefly afterward cooks out the raw flour taste and fully thickens the sauce.

Swap the capers

The recipe marks capers as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, onion, clove, butter, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Capersthe original

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