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Or Lamb

Finely minced lamb heated in a milk and egg yolk sauce and served on buttered toast, with alternative fried and baked versions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Or Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Mince the meat into pieces the size of large peas, removing all bone, gristle, fat, and skin.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mash the yolk of a hard-boiled egg with 1 tablespoon of butter, ¼ teaspoon salt, and a pinch of cayenne until it forms a paste.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of flour and pour in ⅔ cup of boiling milk, cooking for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in the chopped egg white.

  4. Stir in the minced meat and heat on the stove without cooking.

Serve on toast

  1. Serve the mixture on thin slices of buttered toast.

  2. For an alternative, mix equal parts of cracker or bread crumbs and oysters with salt, pepper, and butter.

  3. Layer the mixture over the meat and brown in the oven.

  4. Another option is to chop the meat finely, bind it with a thick drawn butter, and form into flat cakes.

  5. Fry the cakes in butter or hot lard after dipping in cracker crumbs.

  6. You can also cut the meat into ½ inch thick slices and trim off the fat.

  7. Brush the slices with milk or water, dip in beaten egg and cracker crumbs, and fry until browned.

  8. Serve on a bed of watercress, topped with a sauce made from flour, cracker crumbs, butter, boiling water, and lemon juice or minced parsley.

  9. Accompany with currant or grape jelly.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Meat (lamb)
Forms the main body of the dish and provides its savoury, meaty flavour.
Egg yolk
Cooked into the paste, it adds richness and helps bind the mixture together.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavour, and helps bind the paste and crumbs.
Flour
Thickens the boiling milk into a smooth sauce that holds the mixture together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the creamy sauce, adding moisture and mild sweetness.
Egg white
Chopped and stirred in, it adds texture and helps set the mixture when cooked.

The step that matters

Stir the minced meat in without cooking it through. The meat should only be heated, not cooked, because overcooking toughens protein and dries it out, making the mixture grainy and tough.

“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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