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Lamb Stove or Lamb Stew

A stew made from a lamb's head simmered in beef stock with spinach, parsley, onions, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lamb Stove or Lamb Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Open the jaws of the lamb's head and wash thoroughly.

Cook

  1. Place the head and lights in a pot with the beef stock.

  2. Boil slowly for 1 hour.

  3. Add parsley and onions shortly before removing from heat.

  4. Wash and string the spinach, adding it 20 minutes before serving.

  5. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then serve in a tureen.

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

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

  2. Lamb + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

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

  3. Spinach + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb's head
Provides the main meat and rich gelatin that gives the stew body.
Lamb lights
Adds soft, tender offal that thickens the broth slightly as it cooks.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the whole stew.
Spinach
Adds leafy green texture and freshness, and wilts quickly in the hot broth.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 1 hour. A gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and the broth clear. A hard, rapid boil toughens proteins and makes the liquid cloudy and greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, beef, spinach, parsley, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, beef, spinach, parsley, pepper. 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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