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To Stew Lambs' Heads

A stew of lamb heads simmered with broth, herbs, lemon, and sherry, served with a reduced sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Stew Lambs' Heads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the heads

  1. Singe off the wool from the lambs' heads.

  2. Soak the heads in hot water for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the jaw-bones from the heads.

  4. Scrape the heads.

  5. Rub the heads with lemon juice.

Stew and strain

  1. Stew the heads in broth with thyme, parsley, eschalot, mint, lemon rind, peppercorns, and salt for 1.5 hours.

  2. Remove the heads from the pot.

  3. Uncover the brains.

  4. Slice the tongues.

  5. Arrange the tongues around the heads.

  6. Strain the sauce.

  7. Reduce the sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. Add lemon juice and sherry to the sauce.

  2. Serve the heads with the sauce.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + minttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together285 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lambs' heads
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Broth
Cooks the heads and carries flavour into the sauce as it reduces.
Sherry
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and helps keep the meat pale.

The step that matters

Reduce the sauce. Reducing concentrates the strained broth so the sauce tastes rich rather than thin. Reducing too hard or too long can make it salty and syrupy, so check it as it thickens.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, lemon, thyme, parsley, sherry):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, lemon, thyme, parsley, sherry. 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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