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Lamb’s Head and Pluck

A lamb head and pluck dish with brain mixture, served with toasted bread, bacon, and optional lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 642 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lamb’s Head and Pluck

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the head and mince

  1. Parboil the lungs and a bit of liver until finely chopped.

  2. In the same water, boil the cleaned head for nearly an hour.

  3. Scald the brains tied in a rag with 5-6 chopped sage leaves for 20 minutes.

  4. Warm the minced mixture in a little of the boiling liquid.

  5. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  6. Thicken the mixture with flour and butter.

Plate the head

  1. Remove the head.

  2. Skin the tongue.

  3. Pour the mince over the head.

  4. Serve with toasted bread slices and lemon slices.

Glaze and serve

  1. Fry the liver, heart, and sweetbread.

  2. Serve them around the dish with bacon slices.

  3. After boiling, wash the head with egg yolk.

  4. Sprinkle the head with bread crumbs and parsley.

  5. Brown the head in a salamander or Dutch oven.

  6. Pour the mince around the head.

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. Sage + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

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

  2. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb's head
Forms the bulk of the dish and becomes tender through long simmering.
Flour
Thickens the minced mixture into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the thickened mince.
Egg yolk
Gives the head a glossy coat that helps the crumbs adhere and brown.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust when browned over high heat.
Bacon
Contributes savory fat and smoky flavor to the accompanying dish.

The step that matters

Browning the head. Browning under a salamander or in a Dutch oven is easy to overdo or underdo. Egg yolk and bread crumbs brown through Maillard reactions at high heat, so watch closely to get a golden crust before it scorches.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, liver, sage, pepper, flour, butter, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, liver, sage, pepper, flour, butter, bread. 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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