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Mutton Sheep’s Brains with Parsley Sauce

A dish of sheep brains simmered in stock and finished with a parsley butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mutton Sheep’s Brains with Parsley Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brains

  1. Soak the brains in salt water for about 2 hours, then remove the skin and fibers.

  2. Cover the brains with boiling water and boil for a few minutes.

  3. Replace the brains in fresh cold water until cold, then put them into boiling stock.

Make the sauce

  1. Add sliced onion, carrot, bay leaf, salt, and pepper to taste, and simmer gently for about 20 minutes.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour, and cook for a few minutes without browning.

  3. Strain the stock into the flour and butter mixture, stir until boiling, and simmer for about 10 minutes.

  4. Reheat the brains in the sauce, and just before serving, add the lemon juice.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

Sheep's brains
Provide the main protein, which turns tender and delicate after gentle simmering.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, giving it a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when cooked briefly with butter.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and cooks the brains gently.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its flavour.

The step that matters

Cook the flour and butter without browning. Cooking the roux only a few minutes lets the starch swell and thicken the stock smoothly. Browning would change the colour and flavour and weaken the sauce's thickening power.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, parsley, lemon, carrot, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley, lemon, carrot, 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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