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Breast of Lamb with Green Peas

A lamb breast stew with green peas, onions, parsley, and a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Breast of Lamb with Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skin and excess fat from the lamb breast and cut it into neat pieces.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan.

Cook

  1. Fry the lamb pieces coated in flour, along with the onion, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stew gently for 30 minutes, then skim off the fat.

  3. Add the green peas and simmer until tender.

Serve

  1. Arrange the meat on a serving dish and pour the gravy and peas over it.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 breast (in the method)
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through gentle stewing.
Flour
Coats the lamb and thickens the gravy as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for frying the lamb and onion, carrying flavour into the dish.
Green peas
Add sweetness and texture to the finished dish.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat after stewing. Lamb releases fat as it stews, and leaving it in makes the gravy greasy. Skimming after the gentle simmer lets the fat rise to the surface so it can be removed before the peas are added.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, onion, pepper, butter, parsley):

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, onion, pepper, butter, parsley. 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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