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Lamb’s Fry

Lamb's fry simmered in stock with butter and flour, served with mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and potato work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 520 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Lamb’s Fry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the lamb's fry and sprinkle it with flour.

Fry and simmer

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan and fry the lamb's fry quickly.

  2. Transfer the fried lamb's fry to a stew pan.

  3. Pour the stock into the frying pan and heat it.

  4. Once hot, pour the stock over the lamb's fry and simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  5. Mix the flour with cold water to create a slurry and thicken the gravy.

  6. Let the gravy boil, then serve the lamb's fry garnished with mashed potatoes.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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's fry
Is the main protein, cooked quickly and then simmered until tender.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the gravy and carries the savoury flavour.
Dripping or butter
Fat for frying, adding richness and browning to the lamb's fry.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as a slurry with cold water.

The step that matters

Adding the flour slurry to the gravy. Flour must be mixed with cold water first so it disperses without lumps. Stirring it into hot liquid dry or without enough mixing causes clumps. The gravy then needs to boil so the starch swells and thickens properly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Okrafits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, flour. 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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