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Loin of Lamb Stewed in Butter

A joint of lamb is stewed slowly in butter and served with sauces and salad.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and asparagus work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 207 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Loin of Lamb Stewed in Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the joint and dry it thoroughly.

  2. Skewer down the joint and place it in a thick saucepan with melted butter (not boiling).

Cook

  1. Simmer slowly over low heat for 2 hours and 15 minutes, turning it halfway through.

  2. Lift it out, skim the gravy, and pour it over the lamb.

Serve

  1. Serve with asparagus, cucumber, or soubise sauce, along with brown gravy, mint sauce, and a salad.

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. Lamb + asparagustop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Lamb + minttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together772 recipes

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

  3. Asparagus + minttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together153 recipes

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

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + asparagustop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,026 recipes

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow, gentle simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and carries flavour as it cooks the lamb gently.

The step that matters

Keep the butter below boiling while simmering. Butter that boils can burn and turn bitter, and vigorous heat toughens meat. A gentle, low simmer keeps the butter rich and lets the connective tissue in the lamb break down slowly.

Swap the mint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, asparagus, 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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