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Lamb, Stewed

A lamb stew made with butter, lemon, mint, pepper, and Soubise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lamb, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the long bones of the lamb across and skewer or bind the meat into a compact form.

Cook

  1. Heat the butter in a large stewpan, then add the pepper, mint, and lemon juice.

  2. Add the meat, cover closely, and cook very gently for about 1 hour, turning the meat 2 or 3 times to brown the entire surface.

  3. If needed, improve the color by adding a few drops of liquid caramel.

Serve

  1. Serve the Soubise sauce separately, or mix ½ pint of stock with 2 teaspoons of flour in the stewpan, boil for 2 to 3 minutes, and season to taste.

  2. Dish up and serve hot.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lamb + minttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together772 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
Forms the main body of the dish, and its meat is cooked slowly until tender.
Butter
Fat that starts the cooking and carries the flavour of the pepper, mint, and lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavour of the lamb.
Soubise sauce
Served alongside the meat as a smooth onion-based accompaniment.

The step that matters

Cooking very gently with the lid closed. Low, gentle heat under a close cover lets the connective tissue in lamb soften slowly without drying the meat. Turning it lets the surface brown evenly while the interior stays moist.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, lemon, pepper, sauce. 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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