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Breast of Lamb with Asparagus Tops

A lamb breast braised with parsley, onions, and boiled asparagus tops in a butter and flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Breast of Lamb with Asparagus Tops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Remove the skin and excess fat from the lamb and cut it into neat pieces.

  2. Dredge the pieces in flour and place them in a stew pan with butter.

Braise

  1. Brown the lamb pieces nicely, then cover with warm water.

  2. Add parsley and onions, then simmer until the meat is cooked.

  3. Skim off the fat, remove the onions and parsley, and finely mince the parsley.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the minced parsley to the gravy along with the boiled asparagus tops.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, simmer for a few more 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + asparagustop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together566 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Lamb + asparagustop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together207 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + asparagustop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,212 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 breast
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering in liquid.
Flour
Coats the lamb so it browns well and helps thicken the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the lamb and enriches the flavour of the gravy.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma to the gravy.
Asparagus tops
Add a tender, green vegetable element and fresh flavour to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the lamb pieces. Browning floured meat in butter creates a deep, savoury crust through the Maillard reaction. Pale, steamed pieces give a flat, grey-tasting gravy, so brown them in batches with space between pieces.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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