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To Fricassee Lamb

A braised lamb dish cooked with water and clarified butter, seasoned with salt, pepper, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

To Fricassee Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Prepare the lamb as for stewing.

  2. Season the pieces with salt and pepper, then roll in flour.

  3. Fry or sauté the lamb in clarified butter until light brown.

  4. Place the browned lamb in a stewing kettle.

Make the sauce and cook

  1. Add 1 pint of water to the pan used for browning and simmer for 5 minutes.

  2. Pour the simmered water over the lamb and cover the kettle.

  3. Let the lamb simmer gently until cooked.

  4. If there is not enough sauce, add more water and flour to the kettle.

  5. Cook for 5 minutes.

  6. Strain over the lamb.

  7. Transfer the lamb to a platter when done.

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 pieces
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering.
Flour
Coats the lamb and thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce.
Clarified butter or drippings
Browns the coated lamb, adding color and rich flavor.

The step that matters

Browning the floured lamb. The lamb should be evenly light brown before simmering. Browning builds flavor through the Maillard reaction, and crowding the pan causes steaming instead, leaving the meat pale and the sauce flat.

“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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