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Lamb, Stewed

A lamb stew cooked slowly with butter, pepper, mint, lemon, and Soubise sauce.

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 ↓

Lamb, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

Cook the lamb

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

  2. Put in the meat, cover closely, and cook gently for about 1 hour, turning the meat 2 or 3 times to brown the entire surface.

Finish and serve

  1. Serve the Soubise sauce separately, or add ½ pint of stock mixed with 2 teaspoons of flour to the stewpan.

  2. Boil for 2 or 3 minutes, season to taste, and improve the color if necessary with a few drops of liquid caramel.

  3. Dish up and serve hot.

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

Lamb
The main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle cooking in a covered pan.
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.
Mint
Contributes a fresh, aromatic herbal flavour to the cooking liquid.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the stock into a smoother, more cohesive sauce when boiled.

The step that matters

Turning the meat during gentle cooking. Turning the meat two or three times during the hour of covered cooking lets every surface brown evenly. Browning builds flavour through the Maillard reaction, and uneven turning leaves pale patches and a flatter taste.

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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