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To Stew Lamb's Head

A stew made from a lamb's head, veal, beef suet, and various aromatics, served with fried brains and meatballs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Stew Lamb's Head

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Wash and clean the lamb's head. Soak it in water for 1 hour. Remove the brains, bones, and tongue carefully.

  2. Remove the eyes.

Make the forcemeat

  1. Chop veal, beef suet, thyme, lemon peel, nutmeg, and anchovies together.

  2. Mix the chopped ingredients with the grated stale rolls and 4 egg yolks. Reserve some mixture for making about 20 balls.

  3. Clean and wash the mushrooms, oysters, and chop the remaining 6 egg yolks.

Cook the gravy and head

  1. Stew the oysters with 2 quarts of gravy and mace.

  2. Tie the lamb's head with string, cover it, and stew for 2 hours.

  3. Strain the gravy from the lamb's head, add truffles, morels, and mushrooms, and boil together.

Fry and serve

  1. Beat the brains with lemon peel, parsley, nutmeg, and 1 egg yolk.

  2. Fry the brains in small cakes in hot oil and keep warm.

  3. Fry the reserved meatballs and keep warm.

  4. Add the remaining fried brains to the gravy and simmer for 1-2 minutes.

  5. Pour the gravy over the lamb's head and arrange the fried brains and meatballs around it.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  2. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

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

  3. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

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

  4. Lamb + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb's head
Forms the main body of the stew and gives rich, gelatinous meat after long stewing.
Veal
Provides the lean meat base for the forcemeat balls, giving body and texture.
Beef suet
Adds fat to the forcemeat, keeping it moist and tender as it cooks.
Stale rolls
Soak up liquid and bind the forcemeat so it holds its shape.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat and enrich the brains and balls, helping them set when cooked.
Oysters
Add briny, savoury flavour to the gravy as they stew.

The step that matters

Stewing the lamb's head for 2 hours. The head must be covered and cooked gently for the full time so the connective tissue breaks down into gelatin and the meat becomes tender. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and break it apart.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, veal, beef, thyme, lemon, egg, mushroom):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, veal, beef, thyme, lemon, egg, mushroom. 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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