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Lamb Stew

A hearty lamb stew with salt pork, onions, potatoes, and dumplings, thickened with flour and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lamb Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Remove all fat from the lamb and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Wash the lamb well and place it in a pot with enough cold water to cover it.

Stew

  1. Heat the pot gradually and let the lamb stew gently until it is partly done.

  2. Add the salt pork, sliced onions, pepper, salt, and raw potatoes.

  3. Cover the pot and continue to stew until the meat is tender.

  4. Drop in the dumplings and cook for an additional 15 minutes.

  5. Thicken the gravy with a little flour moistened with milk before serving.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Lamb + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together623 recipes

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

  4. Onion + biscuittop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Provides the meat that becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that enriches the broth.
Onions
Release sweetness and aroma as they cook into the stew.
Potatoes
Break down slightly during stewing, adding body and starch to the liquid.
Flour
Starch that thickens the gravy when moistened with milk.
Dumplings
Soak up the cooking liquid and become soft and light in the stew.

The step that matters

Heating the lamb gradually and stewing gently. Rapid boiling toughens meat proteins and leaves the lamb dry and chewy. Slow, gentle heat lets connective tissue break down so the meat becomes tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pork, pepper, potato, flour, milk, biscuit):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pork, pepper, potato, flour, milk, biscuit. 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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