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Stewed Lamb and Green Peas

A lamb stew cooked with stock, spices, and green peas, finished with a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mint and peas are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Stewed Lamb and Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Cut the lamb into neat chops and dredge with flour, pepper, and salt.

  2. Brown the chops in butter or dripping.

Stew

  1. Place the chops in a clean pan with boiling hot stock, adding salt, pepper, nutmeg, mint, and green onion.

  2. Cover closely and simmer for about 20 minutes.

  3. Add the green peas and simmer until tender.

Serve

  1. Place the peas in the center of a hot dish and arrange the chops around them.

  2. Strain and thicken the gravy with cornflour, then pour it around the dish.

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. Mint + peastop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + minttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 chops
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during slow simmering in the stock.
Flour
Coats the chops so they brown well and help thicken the gravy.
Stock
Supplies the liquid that cooks the lamb and forms the base of the gravy.
Butter or dripping
Fat that browns the chops, adding colour and rich flavour.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a tender texture to the finished dish.
Cornflour (in the method)
Thickens the strained stock into a glossy gravy.

The step that matters

Brown the chops in butter or dripping. Browning creates flavour through the Maillard reaction. Chops that are crowded or wet will steam instead of browning, leaving the gravy flatter.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, flour, pepper, butter, nutmeg, mint, peas. 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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