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Lamb Brains and Tongue

A dish of boiled lamb tongue and brains served together with a cream and butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 Brains and Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Place the tongue in a saucepan and cover it with cold water.

  2. Boil the brains and tongue together for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the tongue from the head after boiling it.

  4. Skin the tongue.

Prepare the brains

  1. Wash the lamb brains in lukewarm water and pick out the fibers from the brains.

  2. Tie the brains in a piece of muslin with the minced parsley.

  3. Remove the brains from the pot.

  4. Chop the brains small and season them with pepper and salt.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chopped brains, cream, and butter rolled in flour.

  2. Stir the mixture over heat and let it boil for 1-2 minutes.

  3. Place the tongue on a hot dish and serve the brains around the tongue.

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

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  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

Cream
Makes the brains a smooth, rich sauce that coats the chopped meat.
Butter rolled in flour
Flour and butter thicken the cream into a smooth, glossy sauce.
Lamb brains
Soft, delicate meat that is chopped and bound into the sauce.
Lamb tongue
Firm meat that is simmered until tender, then skinned and served whole.

The step that matters

Stirring the brains, cream and flour-butter mixture over heat. Flour needs to be heated fully to thicken the cream properly; stirring keeps the mixture smooth and stops the flour from clumping or scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

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