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A Tureen of Lamb's Tails

A stew made with lamb's tails, lean ham, old fowls, onions, thyme, parsley, mace, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 ↓

A Tureen of Lamb's Tails

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the lamb's tails and place them in a small soup pot until needed.

  2. In a stew pan, layer the bottom with chopped lean ham.

  3. Cut up the old fowls and add them to the ham.

Simmer

  1. Add the onions, thyme, parsley, and mace.

  2. Pour in ½ pint of water and simmer slowly for one hour, ensuring it doesn't catch at the bottom.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Thyme + macetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb's tails
Provide the main meat and rich flavour as they slowly release their juices into the stew.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the broth as it cooks in the bottom of the pan.
Old fowls
Old birds have tougher meat that becomes tender through long, slow simmering and adds richer flavour to the broth.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they simmer, adding body and savoury depth to the stew.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly without letting it catch. Gentle heat over one hour tenderises the tough meat and draws out flavour. Too much heat or too little stirring can scorch the base, making the stew taste bitter.

Swap the mace

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

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

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