Skip to main content
Main

Lamb or Kid Fricassee

A stew of lamb or kid slices simmered with onions, mace, and broth, thickened with butter and flour, finished with cream, egg yolks, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lamb or Kid Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Season the lamb or kid slices with salt and pepper.

Make the stew

  1. In a stewpan, combine the lamb with onions, mace, and broth; simmer for 30 minutes.

  2. Stir in butter and flour to thicken the mixture.

  3. In a bowl, mix egg yolks, cream, parsley, and nutmeg; add to the stew without boiling.

  4. Add boiled asparagus tops and optional beans or peas; heat gently.

Serve

  1. Serve with a sauce made from veal gravy, lemon, mushroom ketchup, lemon pickle, and nutmeg.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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 kid
Provides the meat that becomes tender during the long, gentle simmer.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the stew into a smooth, coating sauce.
Egg yolks and cream
Enrich the sauce with richness and body, setting lightly when gently heated.
Veal gravy
Adds savory depth to the sauce served alongside the dish.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolk and cream mixture without boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat but scramble and curdle if the mixture boils, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth and creamy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, onion, butter, flour, cream, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, onion, butter, flour, cream, egg. 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 recipesAsparagus SoupAsparagus Soup179 recipesAsparagus SaladAsparagus Salad77 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes