Skip to main content
Main

Stuffed Lamb

A lamb shoulder stuffed with forcemeat, onions, and herbs, stewed with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lamb and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 896 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Stuffed Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the blade from the shoulder of lamb.

  2. Fill the cavity with forcemeat and sew it up with coarse thread.

Stew

  1. Place the lamb in a stewpan with bacon underneath and on top.

  2. Add the chopped onions and gravy.

  3. Stew for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with reduced gravy poured over the lamb.

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 + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Lamb + oniontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,407 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Shoulder of lamb
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the meat that becomes tender during stewing.
Forcemeat
Fills the cavity, adding moisture and richness as it cooks inside the meat.
Fat bacon
Lies under and over the lamb, adding fat that bastes the meat and adds savoury flavour.
Onions
Soften during stewing, adding sweetness and aroma to the gravy.
Gravy
Liquid that braises the lamb and reduces to a richer sauce for serving.

The step that matters

Stew for 2 hours. Slow, gentle stewing in liquid breaks down the connective tissue in lamb shoulder so it becomes tender. Too little time leaves it tough, while a hard boil can dry the meat and toughen its fibres.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, beef. 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.

More stuffed lamb recipes

Shoulder 15Breast 6Leg 4Trotters 4Quarter 3Shoulder with Sorrel Sauce 3 See all 2 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes