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Sheep or Lambs' Trotters

A stew of sheep or lamb trotters stuffed with quenelles or forcemeat, simmered in stock and served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sheep or Lambs' Trotters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the trotters

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

  2. Save the cooking liquid and do not break the skin of the trotters.

  3. Stuff the trotters with quenelles or forcemeat.

Cook and serve

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

  2. Glaze the trotters.

  3. Serve with soubise sauce or tomato 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Sauce and butter 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

Lamb trotters
Provide the gelatinous meat and skin that hold the stuffing and set during stewing.
Quenelles or forcemeat
Supply a soft, moist filling that sits inside the trotter and stays tender when cooked.
Good stock or brown sauce
Adds savoury depth and moisture, and its gelatine gives the glaze body.
Butter
Adds richness and promotes browning when the trotters are fried.

The step that matters

Do not break the skin of the trotters. The skin holds the stuffing inside and keeps the meat moist during long stewing. A split skin lets filling leak out and the meat dry or break apart in the liquid.

“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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