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Lamb, Blanquette of

A slow‑cooked lamb dish simmered with onion, lime, curry, ginger, cloves, and sugar, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Lamb, Blanquette of

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, place the sliced lamb and barely cover it with warm water.

  2. Add the chopped onion, lime juice, sugar, curry powder, ginger, cloves, and salt.

  3. Simmer gently for 2 to 3 hours.

  4. Serve with well-boiled rice.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lime + gingertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,621 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lime + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together909 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lime + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,014 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 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
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aromatic body to the cooking liquid.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced flavor of the dish.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 2 to 3 hours. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the lamb break down slowly into tender meat. A hard boil toughens muscle fibers and can make the meat stringy and dry.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, meat, lime, sugar, ginger, clove, rice):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, meat, lime, sugar, ginger, clove, rice. 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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