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Lamb's Stones

Fried lamb's stones served with veal gravy and garnished with boiled force-meat balls and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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

  1. Fry the lamb's stones in lard until golden brown.

  2. Remove the lamb's stones from the lard.

  3. Place them before the fire.

Make the sauce

  1. Thicken the veal gravy with flour in a saucepan over heat.

  2. Add the lemon slice, ketchup, lemon-pickle, nutmeg, and beaten egg yolk.

  3. Stir until the mixture is white and thick.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the lamb's stones to the gravy.

  2. Heat through.

  3. Serve on a dish with boiled force-meat balls and thin lemon slices as 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

Lamb's stones (in the method)
The main ingredient, fried until golden brown for a crisp, browned outside.
Veal gravy
Provides the liquid base and savoury body of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the lamb's stones.
Egg yolk
Thickens and enriches the sauce as it warms, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and tang to the sauce.
Lemon-pickle
Adds sharp acidity and savoury flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten egg yolk. Egg yolk proteins thicken the sauce as they gently warm, but if the heat is too high or the yolk goes in too fast, they scramble into lumps. Stirring steadily while adding it keeps the sauce smooth.

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.

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