Skip to main content
Main

Lamb's Head

A roasted lamb's head served with a liver, tongue, and heart mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lamb's Head

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Parboil the lamb's head.

  2. Score the lamb's head.

  3. Season the head.

  4. Egg the head.

  5. Cover the head with a mixture of bread crumbs and parsley.

  6. Brown the head before the fire.

Make the mince

  1. Make a mince of part of the liver, tongue, and heart.

  2. Stew the mince in broth or water with pepper and salt until tender.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fry the rest of the liver with parsley.

  2. Put the mince in a dish.

  3. Lay the head on top of the mince.

  4. Place the fried liver around the head.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Lamb + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,322 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the bread crumb coating so it adheres to the head during browning.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust over the head when exposed to heat.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and moisture to the dish.

The step that matters

Brown the head before the fire. The crumb crust needs direct heat to brown without drying the meat beneath. Browning too long can scorch the crumbs before the head is heated through.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, liver, pepper, bread, parsley, egg, cream):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, liver, pepper, bread, parsley, egg, cream. 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.

More lamb's head recipes

Stew 5with Mince 3Minced 3 See all 7 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes