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Stewed Lamb

Stewed lamb with butter, lemon, mint, pepper, served with Soubise sauce or stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Stewed Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Saw the long bones across and either skewer or bind the meat into a compact form.

Stew

  1. Heat the butter in a large stewpan, add the pepper, mint, and lemon juice.

  2. Put in the meat, cover closely, and cook very gently for about 1 hour, turning the meat two or three times to brown the entire surface.

Finish and serve

  1. Serve the Soubise sauce separately, or add ½ cup of stock mixed with 1 teaspoon of flour to the stewpan, boil for a few minutes, and season to taste.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Neck or breast of lamb
Main meat that becomes tender during slow, covered cooking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the meat brown in the pan.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich meat.
Soubise sauce
Onion-based sauce served alongside for moisture and savoury sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook very gently with the pan covered. Low, covered heat lets the tough connective tissue in the lamb break down slowly. Too much heat toughens the meat and dries the surface before it becomes tender.

Swap the mint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, lemon, pepper, 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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