Skip to main content
Main

Lamb's Stones

A stew of lamb's kidneys simmered in veal gravy with ketchup, lemon pickle, nutmeg, egg yolk, and cream, served with forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lamb's Stones

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the kidneys

  1. Fry lamb's stones in hog's lard until browned.

  2. Remove and place on a plate by the fire.

Make the sauce

  1. Thicken veal gravy with flour in a saucepan.

  2. Add lemon slice, ketchup, lemon pickle, nutmeg, egg yolk, and cream.

  3. Heat while shaking until thick and white.

  4. Add lamb's stones and heat through.

Serve

  1. Serve in a dish with forcemeat balls and lemon slices for garnish.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Ketchup + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal gravy
Forms the savoury liquid base that the sauce is built on.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the kidneys.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce as it is heated, giving it a white, creamy body.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the sauce's texture.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat while shaking until thick and white. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat; if the sauce gets too hot it can curdle or scramble, so it should be heated slowly and kept moving.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, flour, ketchup, nutmeg, egg, cream):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, flour, ketchup, nutmeg, egg, cream. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes