Why it works: Lamb and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,232 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Loin of Lamb Stewed in Butter
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash the joint and dry it thoroughly.
Skewer down the flap and place it in a thick saucepan.
Melt the butter in the saucepan without allowing it to boil.
Cook
Simmer the lamb slowly over low heat for 2 hours and 15 minutes, turning it when it is slightly more than half done.
Remove the lamb, skim the gravy, and pour it over the meat.
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.
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Lamb + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,232 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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 stew and releases juices that flavour the dish as it cooks slowly.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the gravy a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
The step that matters
Melting the butter without boiling. Butter is mostly fat, water and milk solids. Boiling can cause the water to spatter and the milk solids to scorch, making the butter taste burnt and the gravy grainy.
“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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