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Lamb's Feet, a LA Poulette

A braised lamb's feet dish cooked in sauce à la poulette with lemon, mushrooms, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and mushroom work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 450 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lamb's Feet, a LA Poulette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the feet

  1. Remove the shank bones from the lamb's feet without cutting through the covering.

  2. Scald the feet in boiling water for 5 minutes, then immerse them in cold water.

  3. Wipe the feet, then singe them over a charcoal fire.

  4. Rub the feet with lemon juice.

  5. Trim the extremities of the feet.

  6. Make an incision in the hoof to remove the tuft of wool.

Braise and serve

  1. Braise the feet in sauce à la poulette for about 1 hour.

  2. Drain the feet on a cloth.

  3. Place the feet in a stewpan with button mushrooms and enough sauce to warm them over the stove.

  4. Serve neatly with a border of fried bread croutons.

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. Lamb + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Lemon + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,480 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lamb + saucetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together925 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

  5. Lamb + lemontop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,127 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb's feet
Provide the main meat and gelatinous skin, which become tender and rich after long braising.
Sauce à la poulette
Supplies the creamy, savoury liquid that moistens and flavours the feet during braising.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a tender texture to the finished dish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the feet's surface pale.

The step that matters

Scald, then cool the feet before singeing. Brief boiling loosens the outer covering so it can be cleaned and trimmed, and cold water stops further cooking. Skipping or overlong scalding can make the skin tear or the feet cook unevenly before braising.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, mushroom, sauce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, mushroom, sauce. 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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