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Artemisia Lamb-meat

A lamb stew flavored with artemisia leaves, paprika, sour cream, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,226 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Artemisia Lamb-meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Wash and cut the lamb into small pieces.

  2. In a pot, fry the chopped onion in 1 tablespoon of lard until yellow.

  3. Add the lamb and salt, then stew for 30 minutes.

  4. Add 1 quart of water and cook the lamb until soft.

Make the thickening

  1. In a small pan, prepare a thickening by heating 2 tablespoons of lard, flour, and paprika until it turns pink.

  2. Add the artemisia to the thickening, steam briefly, then mix in the lamb, vinegar, and sour cream.

  3. Bring to a boil and serve.

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 + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  3. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow stewing in liquid.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked in fat, giving it body.
Sour cream
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the finished sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the fat.
Lard
Carries flavour in the frying and thickening steps and adds richness.

The step that matters

Cooking the thickening until it turns pink. Flour cooked in fat must be heated long enough to lose its raw taste and thicken properly, but heated too far it can scorch and turn bitter. Watch the colour closely.

Swap the artemisia

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, onion, flour, cream, vinegar):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Artemisiathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, onion, flour, cream, vinegar. 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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