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A Fricassee of Lamii-stones a N D Sw Eetb Re a Us

A fricassee of lamb-stones, sweetbreads, and oysters with gravy, asparagus, and pistachios.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and nutmeg share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 80 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

A Fricassee of Lamii-stones a N D Sw Eetb Re a Us

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the meats and nuts

  1. Fry the lamb-stones, sweetbreads, egg yolks, pistachio nuts, and oysters until golden brown.

Stew

  1. Pour out the butter, then add the drawn gravy, lamb-stones, asparagus, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and shallots.

  2. Stew everything together for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks mixed with a little white wine and mace, stirring until thickened.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with lemon.

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. Pistachio + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Lamb + asparagustop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together207 recipes

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

  4. Pistachio + asparagustop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together15 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Asparagus + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,968 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide a tender, rich texture as the main meat in the fricassee.
Egg yolks
Thicken the gravy into a smooth, creamy sauce when stirred in.
Drawn gravy
Forms the liquid base that the other ingredients stew in.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the ingredients brown during frying.
Shallots
Add a mild aromatic sharpness that flavours the stew.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently. If the mixture boils or is added too quickly, the yolks can scramble and turn grainy, so stir constantly over low heat.

Swap the pistachio

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, egg, oyster, butter, asparagus, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Pistachiothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, egg, oyster, butter, asparagus, nutmeg, pepper. 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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