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Stewed Breast of Lamb

A slow‑cooked lamb breast stewed in stock, seasoned with pepper and salt, finished with sherry and a butter‑flour sauce.

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 ↓

Stewed Breast of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the lamb and cut it into pieces.

  2. Season the pieces with pepper and salt.

Stew and finish

  1. Place the lamb in a saucepan and pour in enough stock to cover it.

  2. Stew gently until tender, about 1 hour.

  3. Before serving, thicken the sauce with a little butter and flour.

  4. Add the sherry, bring to a boil, and pour over the meat.

  5. Garnish with green peas or stewed mushrooms if desired.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Lamb + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + sherrytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

Butter and flour 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 breast
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Stock
Cooks the lamb gently and forms the base of the sauce.
Butter and flour
Thicken the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a rich, sweet aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stewing gently until tender. Lamb breast is fatty and connective-tissue rich, so it needs low, gentle heat over time to break down and become tender. A hard boil toughens the meat and can make the liquid cloudy and greasy.

“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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