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A Ragoo of Lamb

A lamb ragoo is a stew of lamb with bacon, herbs, spices, oysters, mushrooms, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

A Ragoo of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Remove the knuckle bone from the lamb and lard it with thin bits of bacon.

  2. Dust the lamb with flour and fry it until golden brown.

  3. Place the lamb in an earthen pot or stewpan and add the broth or gravy, herbs, mace, cloves, and white pepper.

  4. Cover and stew for 30 minutes, then strain the liquid and keep the lamb warm.

Make the sauce

  1. Flour the oysters and fry them until brown, then drain the fat.

  2. Skim the fat off the gravy and pour it over the oysters.

  3. Add an anchovy and wine, then boil until the sauce thickens.

  4. Incorporate fresh and pickled mushrooms and lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Serve the lamb on a dish and pour the sauce over it, garnishing with lemon.

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. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Clove + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Lamb + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during slow stewing.
Bacon
Larding adds fat that keeps the lean lamb moist and savoury as it cooks.
Broth or gravy
Liquid that stews the lamb and forms the base of the sauce.
Oysters
Fried in flour, they add a rich, briny flavour and body to the sauce.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth, and reduces to help thicken and flavour the sauce.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy flavour and a soft, meaty texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the lamb until golden brown. Browning the flour-dusted surface creates flavourful Maillard compounds and a colour that carries into the sauce. Pale frying leaves the dish tasting flat.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, flour, mace, clove, oyster, white wine, mushroom):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, flour, mace, clove, oyster, white wine, mushroom. 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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