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Lamb's Heads, Stewed

A stew of lamb's heads with parsley, onion, lemon rind, nutmeg, and a sauce of cooking liquid, egg yolks, lemon juice, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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's Heads, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the heads

  1. Cook the lamb's heads in salted water until the bones can be removed.

  2. Remove the bones and brains from the heads.

  3. Return the heads to the pan.

  4. Add chopped parsley, onion, lemon rind, salt, and nutmeg.

  5. Stew over low heat for 40 minutes.

Prepare and serve

  1. Cut the heads into even pieces.

  2. Place the pieces in the center of a serving dish.

  3. Fry and chop the brains.

  4. Arrange the brains and sliced tongue around the dish.

  5. Make a sauce with the cooking liquid, egg yolks, lemon juice, and flour.

  6. Stir the sauce until thickened.

  7. Pour the sauce over the dish.

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 + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set when gently heated.
Flour
Thickens the sauce, giving it body along with the egg yolks.
Cooking liquid
Forms the base of the sauce and carries the flavour of the stewed heads.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the fat.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce until thickened. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated. Stir gently over low heat so the sauce thickens smoothly rather than turning grainy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, parsley, lemon, nutmeg, egg, 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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