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An Excellent Dinner of Lamb's or Pig's Fry

A fried dish of lamb or pork organs, seasoned and battered, cooked in butter or dripping with onion, sage, and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

An Excellent Dinner of Lamb's or Pig's Fry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and parboil the lights, liver, sweetbread, and heart for about 10 minutes.

  2. Slice the parboiled ingredients and dredge them with flour.

  3. Season with pepper, Cayenne pepper, and coarse sea salt.

Batter and fry

  1. Dip the pieces into a batter made of 1 beaten egg, 2 teaspoons flour, ⅓ cup milk or water, and a little salt and pepper.

  2. Fry in butter or dripping with chopped onion and sage (if using pig's fry) along with a bit of bacon.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 or pig's lights
Forms the main body of the dish, giving bulk and a firm, chewy bite.
Flour
Dries the surface so the batter grips, and thickens the batter to set a crisp coating.
Egg
Binds the batter and sets when fried, holding the coating to the meat.
Milk or water
Thins the batter to a coating consistency and adds moisture that steams under the crust.
Butter or dripping
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the coating.
Bacon
Releases fat and savoury flavour into the pan as it cooks.

The step that matters

Dip and fry the coated pieces. Pat the flour-dredged pieces dry so the batter clings. Fry at a steady heat so the batter sets and browns before the inside overcooks and the coating turns greasy.

“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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