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Lamb Fricassee

A stew of lamb brisket simmered with butter, bacon, onion, parsley, lemon, pepper, salt, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lamb Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Cut the lamb brisket into 4‑inch square pieces.

  2. Wash, dry, and flour the pieces.

Cook

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and bacon with parsley for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the lamb, chopped onion, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  3. Simmer for 2 hours.

  4. Stir in the egg yolks.

  5. Shake the pan over the heat for 5 minutes 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 brisket
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor through the sauce.
Flour (in the method)
Coats the pieces to help thicken the sauce and aid browning.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they gently set with heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat but scramble if the sauce boils. Add them off the boil and keep the heat low so the sauce turns creamy rather than grainy.

Swap the onion

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

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

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