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Lamb's Head Minced

A dish of minced lamb's head, liver, heart, lungs, parsley, lemon peel, cullis, salt, pepper, bread crumbs, egg yolk, lard, brains, and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lamb's Head Minced

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the meats

  1. Cut the lamb's head in two.

  2. Blanch the head with the liver, heart, and lungs.

  3. Chop the blanched meat.

Make the minced mixture

  1. Mix the chopped meat with parsley, lemon peel, cullis, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stew the mixture gently until cooked through.

Bake and fry

  1. Wash the head with egg yolk.

  2. Season the head with salt and pepper.

  3. Sprinkle the head with bread crumbs.

  4. Bake the head gently at 350°F (175°C) until tender.

  5. Clean the brains with warm water.

  6. Dry the brains.

  7. Dip the brains in egg yolk and bread crumbs.

  8. Fry the brains in lard.

Serve

  1. Serve the minced mixture under the head, with fried brains and rashers of bacon 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Lamb + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,322 recipes

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

  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 head
Forms the main meat, becoming tender during blanching and slow baking.
Egg yolk
Acts as a binding wash that helps bread crumbs adhere and brown during baking and frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust on the head and the coated brains.
Cullis
Adds moisture and savoury depth to the minced mixture while it stews.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic brightness that balances the richness of the meats.

The step that matters

Stew the mixture gently until cooked through. Gentle heat cooks the chopped meats through without toughening their proteins or drying out the mixture, which keeps it moist and tender.

“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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