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Stewed Lamb with Green Pease

A stew of lamb simmered with green peas, flavored with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 with Green Pease

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

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

  2. Remove any scum, then add pepper and salt.

  3. Let the meat stew for about 2 hours.

  4. Add boiling water to create gravy.

Add the peas and thicken

  1. Add the shelled green peas and cook for about 20 minutes.

  2. Mix flour into milk and stir into the stew.

  3. Cook for an additional 2 minutes.

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

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

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  5. Peas + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,309 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow stewing.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a soft, tender texture to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the milk and stew liquid into a smooth gravy.
Milk
Adds richness and body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stirring flour into milk before adding it to the stew. Flour added directly to hot liquid tends to clump. Whisking it smoothly into cold milk first lets the starch disperse evenly, so the gravy thickens smoothly when heated.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, flour, milk. 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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