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Stewed Breast of Lamb

A lamb breast stew with peas, butter, flour roux, and white stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,458 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Stewed Breast of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Cut the breast of lamb into pieces and remove the skin.

  2. Place the pieces in a stewpan with a blade of mace.

  3. Sprinkle with salt and white pepper.

  4. Add white stock to cover the meat.

Stew and finish

  1. Simmer for about 1 hour or until tender.

  2. In a separate pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  3. Gradually add some of the cooking liquid to the roux, stirring until smooth.

  4. Combine the sauce with the lamb and add green peas.

  5. Cook for an additional 10 minutes until peas are tender.

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. Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Peas + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-hex-3-en-1-ol (freshly cut grass green and herbaceous notes).

  3. Peas + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Lamb + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together520 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Breast of lamb
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow simmering.
Butter
Enriches the roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a tender vegetable texture to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Making the roux and adding the liquid. Cook the flour in the butter briefly to remove its raw taste, then add the cooking liquid gradually while stirring. This keeps the sauce smooth instead of lumpy.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, butter, flour, peas, potato, olive, mace):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, flour, peas, potato, olive, mace. 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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