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Lamb’s Stones

A dish of fried lamb's stones served in a thickened veal gravy with lemon, ketchup, and spices.

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 the stones

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

  2. Remove them and place before the fire.

Make the sauce

  1. Thicken veal gravy with flour in a saucepan.

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

  3. Stir until thick and white.

  4. Add the lamb's stones and shake until hot.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled force-meat balls and lemon slices.

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 liquid base of the sauce, carrying the other flavours.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce further as it heats and gives it richness.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smoother, softer texture to the sauce.
Ketchup
Adds savoury sweetness and tang to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolk into the sauce until thick. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat. If the sauce gets too hot or is not stirred constantly, the yolk can scramble and turn grainy instead of smooth and thick.

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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