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Fricassee Lamb's Stones and Sweetbreads

A fricassee of lamb's stones and sweetbreads with egg yolks, pistachios, oysters, and drawn gravy, garnished with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and shallot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 24 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Fricassee Lamb's Stones and Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch and parboil the lamb stones and sweetbreads. If sweetbreads are thick, cut them in half.

Fry and stew

  1. Fry the lamb stones, sweetbreads, egg yolks, pistachio nuts, and oysters until browned.

  2. Pour off the butter and add drawn gravy, lamb stones, asparagus tops, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and shallots.

  3. Stew for 10 minutes, then add beaten egg yolks mixed with a little white wine and mace.

Thicken and serve

  1. Stir until thickened, then 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 + shallottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Asparagus + shallottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Tender, delicate meat that becomes rich and savoury when blanched and browned.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Drawn gravy
Forms the liquid base of the fricassee, carrying flavour and moisture through the stew.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour that deepens the sauce during frying and stewing.
Shallots
Add a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the stew.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat and can scramble if the stew boils. Keep the heat low and stir steadily once the yolks go in, so the sauce turns smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the pistachio

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Pistachiothe original

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