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Iamb Stew

A lamb stew with salt pork, onions, potatoes, and dumplings thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Iamb Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Remove all fat from the lamb and cut it into 2‑inch pieces.

  2. Wash the lamb and place it in a pot with enough cold water to cover it.

Stew

  1. Heat the pot gradually and let the lamb stew gently until partly done.

  2. Add the sliced salt pork, finely sliced onions, pepper, coarse sea salt, and cut potatoes.

  3. Cover the pot and continue to stew until the meat is tender.

  4. Drop in small made dumplings and cook for an additional 15 minutes.

  5. Thicken the gravy with a little flour moistened with milk before serving.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Lamb + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together623 recipes

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

  4. Onion + biscuittop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 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 main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the broth as it cooks.
Potatoes
Absorb flavor from the stew and soften, adding body to the dish.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the lamb and dumplings.
Made dumplings
Soak up the gravy and cook into soft, tender pieces.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with moistened flour. Flour added dry would clump in the hot liquid. Mixing it with milk first makes a smooth slurry that thickens the gravy evenly without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pork, pepper, potato, flour, milk, biscuit):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pork, pepper, potato, flour, milk, biscuit. 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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