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A Ragout of Lamb

A ragout of lamb is a stew of lamb pieces cooked with broth, herbs, spices, oysters, mushrooms, anchovy, wine, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

A Ragout of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Remove the knuckle bone from the lamb.

  2. Lard the lamb with bacon bits.

  3. Dust the lamb with flour.

  4. Fry the lamb until golden brown.

Stew the lamb

  1. Place the lamb in an earthen pot or stewpan.

  2. Add broth, herbs, mace, cloves, and whole pepper to the pot.

  3. Cover the pot and stew for 30 minutes.

  4. Strain the liquid and keep the lamb warm.

Make the oyster sauce

  1. Flour the oysters.

  2. Fry the oysters until brown.

  3. Drain the fat from the oysters.

  4. Skim the fat off the gravy.

  5. Pour the gravy over the oysters.

  6. Add the anchovy, wine, fresh mushrooms, pickled mushrooms, and lemon juice.

  7. Boil until the sauce thickens.

  8. Pour the sauce over the lamb in the dish.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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, becoming tender through slow stewing.
Flour
Coats the meat and oysters so they brown well and help thicken the sauce.
Broth or gravy
Provides the cooking liquid that gives the stew its savoury base.
Oysters
Adds a briny, rich flavour to the sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and body to the sauce.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil until the sauce thickens. Flour on the oysters and the reduced gravy must be boiled long enough for the starch to swell and set the sauce. Too little boiling leaves it thin, while the wine and lemon juice are added at this stage to balance the richness.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, flour, clove, pepper, oyster, mushroom, lemon. 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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