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Sheep or Lamb's Trotters

A stew of sheep or lamb trotters stuffed with forcemeat or quenelles, then boiled and glazed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sheep or Lamb's Trotters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stew the trotters for several hours until the bones can be easily removed.

  2. Save the cooking liquid.

  3. Stuff the trotters with forcemeat or quenelles without breaking the skin.

Cook and serve

  1. Return the stuffed trotters to the stock and boil for about 15 minutes.

  2. Glaze the trotters and serve with sauce or fry them in butter.

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 + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lamb + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lamb + saucetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together925 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Sheep or lamb trotters
Provide the main body of the dish, with gelatinous skin and meat that holds the stuffing.
Forcemeat or quenelles
Fill the boned trotters, giving a soft, moist, savoury interior.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the trotters when fried.

The step that matters

Stuffing without breaking the skin. Trotter skin holds the filling in place. A tear lets forcemeat leak out during boiling and leaves the trotter dry and misshapen, so the skin needs to stay whole while the trotter is filled.

“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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