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Stewed Breast of Lamb

A slow‑cooked lamb breast simmered in stock and finished with a butter‑flour gravy, served with green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Stewed Breast of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Remove the skin from the lamb and cut it into pieces.

  2. Season the lamb pieces with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Stew

  1. Place the lamb in a stew pan and cover with stock.

  2. Stew gently for 1½ hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, thicken the gravy with butter and flour, bring to a boil, and pour over the meat.

  2. Serve with green peas arranged over and around the meat.

  3. Add stewed mushrooms if desired.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Peas + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together890 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lamb + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb breast
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle stewing.
Butter and flour
Together form a roux that thickens the stock into a gravy.
Stock
Cooks the lamb slowly and forms the base of the gravy.
Green peas
Add sweetness and color as a side arranged around the meat.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy just before serving. Flour needs to be cooked in hot liquid long enough to lose its raw taste and thicken properly. Adding it too early or boiling it unevenly can leave lumps or a pasty flavor, so bring the gravy to a full boil once the butter and flour are added.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

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