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Lamb, Minced

A savory dish of diced lamb cooked with onion, butter, flour, stock, and mushroom ketchup, simmered to a rich gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Lamb, Minced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the lamb into small dice.

  2. Boil the bones and trimmings for 1 hour to make stock.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan and fry the onion until lightly browned.

  2. Add the flour to the onion and brown it as well.

  3. Stir in the gravy or stock, then add the mushroom ketchup and season with pepper and salt.

  4. Simmer gently for 10 minutes.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Provides the main meat and bulk of the dish.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it browns in the butter.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onion and adds richness.
Flour
Browns with the butter and onion, then thickens the liquid into a sauce.
Gravy or stock
Supplies the liquid that forms the sauce around the meat.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour must be cooked with the butter and onion until it smells nutty and loses its raw taste before liquid is added. Stirring in the gravy too early can leave lumps and a floury flavour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, mushroom, ketchup, butter, flour, 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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