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Lamb's Head and Pluck

A stew of lamb's head, pluck, brains, and stock, finished with cream, egg yolk, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lamb's Head and Pluck

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pluck

  1. Scald the lamb's pluck, then let it cool.

  2. Mince the pluck very fine and mix it with the lamb's brains.

Make the stew

  1. Stew the mixture in stock with sweet herbs, onion, pepper, salt, lemon peel, and nutmeg.

  2. Add cream and egg yolk to the stew.

Bake the head

  1. Scald the lamb's head in salted water until nearly done, then remove it from the water.

  2. Pour beaten eggs over the head, sprinkle bread crumbs over it, baste the head with more egg, and add more bread crumbs.

  3. Bake the head in a 400°F (200°C) oven until brown.

  4. Season the baked head with pepper and salt before serving.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb's pluck
Forms the minced body of the stew, giving it a rich, meaty texture.
Lamb's brains
Adds a soft, creamy richness that thickens the minced mixture.
Stock
Provides the liquid that cooks and softens the minced pluck into a stew.
Cream
Adds fat and smoothness, mellowing the stew's texture.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the stew as it sets with gentle heat.
Eggs
Bind the bread crumbs to the head and help form a golden crust.

The step that matters

Bake the head until brown. Egg and bread crumb coating sets and browns in the oven. Too little heat leaves it pale and wet, while too much dries or scorches the crumbs before the head is cooked through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, lemon, nutmeg, cream, egg, bread):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, lemon, nutmeg, cream, egg, bread. 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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