Skip to main content
Main

Lamb's Bits

Lamb's bits, sweetbreads, and liver are fried and served with parsley and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lamb and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,322 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Lamb's Bits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stones from the lamb's bits and split them.

  2. Lay them on a dry cloth with the sweetbreads and liver.

  3. Dredge with flour.

Fry and drain

  1. Fry in lard or butter until light brown.

  2. Drain on a sieve.

  3. Fry a good quantity of parsley.

Serve

  1. Arrange the lamb's bits on a dish.

  2. Place the fried parsley in lumps over them.

  3. Pour melted butter around.

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. Lamb + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,322 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Lamb + livertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together145 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Sweetbreads
Provide a tender, delicate texture when fried until golden.
Liver
Adds a rich, savoury flavour and a firmer, meaty texture.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the pieces brown evenly in the fat.
Lard or butter
Conducts heat for frying and browns the coating while adding richness.
Melted butter
Adds fat and moisture to the finished dish for richness.

The step that matters

Fry until light brown. Frying too hot or too long can darken the flour coating before the meat cooks through, and drying the pieces well first helps the flour stick and brown evenly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes