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Lamb's Feet

A stew of lamb's feet simmered with stock, herbs, and ham, thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Lamb's Feet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the feet

  1. Clean and wash the lamb's feet well.

  2. Scald the feet.

  3. Carefully remove the shankbones without breaking the skin.

  4. Soak the feet in cold water for 2-3 hours.

  5. Drain the feet.

  6. Place the feet in a stewpan.

  7. Cover with cold water and lemon juice.

  8. Boil for 10-15 minutes.

  9. Transfer the feet to cold water to cool.

  10. Cut off the bones and any hair from the feet.

Stew and make the sauce

  1. Stew the feet in white stock with onion, parsley, thyme, mushrooms, peppercorns, mace, and ham for 3 hours.

  2. Strain the sauce.

  3. Thicken the sauce with flour and butter.

  4. Add milk to the sauce.

  5. Bring the feet back to a boil in the sauce.

  6. Add lemon juice to the sauce.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with peas or asparagus.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb's feet
Provide gelatinous connective tissue that gives the stew a rich, silky body.
Flour
Thickens the strained sauce with butter into a smooth, cohesive base.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the sauce's flavour.
Lemon juice
Acidity helps loosen and clean the feet during cooking and brightens the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the feet in lemon water. Boiling only briefly, for 10-15 minutes, is enough to loosen hair and skin; longer boiling can toughen or break the skin before the long stew. Keeping the skin intact matters because it holds the feet together during stewing.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, lemon, onion, parsley, thyme, mushroom, ham):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, lemon, onion, parsley, thyme, mushroom, ham. 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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