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Stewed Breast of Lamb

A stew of lamb breast cooked with stock, thickened with butter and flour, served with green peas and optional stewed mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom 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 ↓

Stewed Breast of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Skin the lamb and cut it into pieces.

  2. Season the pieces with pepper and salt.

Stew

  1. Place the lamb in a stewpan and cover with stock or gravy.

  2. Stew gently for 1.5 hours.

Thicken and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy with butter and flour.

  2. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  3. Pour the gravy over the meat.

  4. Serve with green peas arranged over and around the meat.

  5. Add stewed mushrooms if available.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Peas + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together890 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lamb + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb breast
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle stewing.
Butter
Enriches the gravy and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat rather than running off.
Green peas
Adds sweetness and bright colour alongside the rich meat.

The step that matters

Bring the gravy to a boil. Flour needs to reach a boil to fully swell and thicken the gravy. Boiling too weakly leaves a thin, starchy-tasting sauce.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

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