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To Fricassee Lamb’s Stones Unci Sweetbread

A fricassee of lamb's stones, sweetbreads, and assorted ingredients simmered in gravy.

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 ↓

To Fricassee Lamb’s Stones Unci Sweetbread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch, parboil, and slice the lamb's stones.

  2. Flour the sweetbreads; if thick, cut them in half.

Fry and stew

  1. Fry the lamb's stones, sweetbreads, egg yolks, pistachios, and oysters until golden brown.

  2. Pour off excess butter, then add drawn gravy, lamb's stones, asparagus, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and shallots.

  3. Stew for 10 minutes.

  4. Beat the egg yolks with a little white wine and mace, then stir into the mixture until thickened.

Serve

  1. Dish up and garnish 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the gravy as they set with gentle heat, giving a smooth, rich body.
Drawn gravy
Forms the liquid base of the fricassee, carrying the other ingredients and flavour.
Sweetbreads
Provide a tender, delicate texture that contrasts with the crisp golden frying.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour that deepens the sauce.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion-like aroma to the stew.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can curdle and turn grainy if the mixture is too hot or boils. Add them off the boil and stir constantly so they set into a smooth sauce.

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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