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Sheep’s Brains with Parsley Sauce

A dish of sheep brains simmered in stock with onion, carrot, bay leaf, 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 ↓

Sheep’s Brains with Parsley Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brains

  1. Soak the brains in salt water for about 2 hours.

  2. Remove the skin and fibers from the brains.

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

  4. Replace the brains in fresh cold water until cold.

Poach the brains

  1. Put the brains into boiling stock, add sliced onion and carrot, bay leaf, salt, and pepper.

  2. Simmer gently for about 20 minutes.

Make the parsley sauce

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

  2. Drain the brains and strain the stock into the flour and butter, stirring until boiling.

  3. Simmer for about 10 minutes, then add seasoning.

  4. Reheat the brains in the sauce, and just before serving, add 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 tender, delicate main protein that is poached and served in the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavor, and forms the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
White stock
Poaches the brains and forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savory flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its fattiness.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma and color to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the flour and butter without browning. Cooking the roux gently for a few minutes removes raw flour taste and gives full thickening power; browning would change the sauce's color and flavor.

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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