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To Stew Lambs' Heads

A stew of lamb heads cooked with broth, herbs, lemon, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

To Stew Lambs' Heads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the heads

  1. Singe off the wool from the lambs' heads and soak them in hot water for 30 minutes.

  2. Draw out the jaw-bones and scrape the heads, then rub them with lemon juice.

Stew

  1. Stew the heads in good broth for 1.5 hours with thyme, parsley, eschalot, mint, lemon rind, peppercorns, and salt.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the heads, uncover the brains, and slice the tongues to arrange around the heads.

  2. Strain the sauce, reduce it, and add lemon juice and sherry before serving with the heads.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + minttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together285 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lambs' heads
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Good broth
Carries the flavour into the stew and forms the base of the sauce.
Sherry
Adds sweetness and aroma to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and helps rub the heads clean.

The step that matters

Stewing the heads for 1.5 hours. Stewing gently for the full time lets the connective tissue break down into gelatin, so the meat becomes tender and the sauce gains body. Too short a stew leaves the meat tough and the sauce thin.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, lemon, thyme, parsley, sherry. 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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