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Lamb's Fry

A dish of lamb organs fried and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Lamb's Fry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Trim the sweetbreads.

  2. Simmer the sweetbreads in good white stock with an onion for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the sweetbreads from the stock.

Prepare the brains

  1. Add the brains to the gravy.

  2. Boil the brains until hardened.

  3. Let the brains cool.

  4. Slice the brains.

  5. Egg the brains.

  6. Breadcrumb the brains.

  7. Fry the breadcrumbed brains and sweetbreads in a little butter.

Cook the heart, milt and kidneys

  1. Add the heart and milt to the gravy.

  2. Stew the heart and milt slowly until tender.

  3. Flour the heart and milt.

  4. Fry the heart and milt with the liver and frill until browned.

  5. Slice the kidneys.

  6. Gently fry the kidneys for about 1 minute.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Shake a little flour into the pan.

  2. Stir until the flour begins to brown.

  3. Pour in the gravy.

  4. Season the gravy.

  5. Pour the gravy around the fry.

  6. Arrange the fry neatly on the dish.

  7. Garnish with fried parsley.

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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Liver + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

Sweetbreads
Tender offal that browns well and gives the fry its rich, delicate texture.
Brains
Set firm when boiled, so they can be sliced and coated in egg and breadcrumbs.
Butter
Fat for frying, adding richness and helping the coated pieces brown.
Flour
Coats the heart and milt and browns in the pan to thicken the gravy.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour until it begins to brown. Flour cooked in fat gains colour and nutty flavour as it browns, and it thickens the gravy. Stopping too early leaves a raw, pasty taste; going too far gives a bitter, burnt flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, butter, flour, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, butter, flour, parsley. 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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