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Stewed Neck Op Lamb

A stew of lamb neck simmered with vegetable stock, peas, and herbs, thickened with flour and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stewed Neck Op Lamb

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Wash the neck of lamb and place it in a stewpan with cold vegetable stock.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim the stock, add salt, and remove scum.

  3. Reduce heat to simmer and cook for 30 minutes.

Make the stew

  1. Add peas (or carrots and turnips), cover, and simmer for another 30 minutes.

  2. Mix flour with a little milk until smooth, then pour into the stewpan and stir until thickened.

  3. Season with black pepper, salt, mint, and parsley, and cook gently for another 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat on a hot dish surrounded by peas (or other vegetables) and sauce.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of lamb
Slow simmering breaks down connective tissue, leaving the meat tender and rich in flavor.
Flour
Starch mixed with milk thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce.
Milk
Mixed with flour to make a smooth paste, adding body and creaminess to the sauce.
Peas
Add sweetness and fresh color, and become the vegetable accompaniment to the meat.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour and milk. Flour must be mixed smooth with a little milk before it goes into the hot stock, otherwise it clumps. Stirring until thickened lets the starch swell evenly into a smooth sauce.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, pepper, flour):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, pepper, 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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