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To Dress a Breast of Lamb

Stewed lamb breast in white wine and stock, thickened with butter and flour, served with stewed cucumbers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Dress a Breast of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Cut the breast of lamb into pieces.

Stew and thicken

  1. Stew the pieces in weak stock with white wine, adding pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. When tender, thicken the sauce with butter and flour.

Serve

  1. Prepare stewed cucumbers in gravy to serve over the lamb.

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. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Pepper + cucumbertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cucumbertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Breast of lamb
Provides the meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the stewing liquid and sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the finished sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the meat.
Cucumbers
Stewed in gravy, they add a soft, mild vegetable element to the dish.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce after the lamb is tender. Flour and butter should be added only once the meat is tender. Thickening too early can leave the sauce heavy and pasty, and the stew may reduce unevenly before the lamb has softened.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, white wine, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, white wine, pepper, butter, flour. 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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