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Blanquette of Lamb

A slow‑cooked lamb stew finished with a beurre‑roux and egg‑cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Blanquette of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the lamb

  1. Cut the meat into pieces about 2 inches square.

  2. Place the meat in a stewpan with the onion, herbs, peppercorns, and a little salt.

  3. Cover with cold water and cook gently for about 2 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a separate pan, add the flour, and stir for a few minutes without browning.

  2. Strain ½ pint of the cooking liquid from the meat and add it to the butter and flour mixture.

  3. Stir until boiling, then simmer for a few minutes.

  4. Beat the yolk of egg and cream or milk together, then add to the sauce, stirring gently.

  5. Cook gently for a few minutes, ensuring it does not boil to prevent curdling.

Serve

  1. Arrange the meat on a hot dish, strain the sauce over it, 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Lamb + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,322 recipes

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

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, gentle simmering.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the finished sauce, giving it a silky body.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the sauce's flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream. Egg yolk thickens through gentle heat but curdles if the sauce boils. Keep it below a simmer and stir gently so the sauce stays smooth and glossy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, parsley, thyme, butter, flour, egg, cream):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, parsley, thyme, butter, flour, egg, cream. 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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