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Sauted Fillets of Lamb

Sautéed fillets of lamb marinated in olive oil, vinegar, salt, onion, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,649 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sauted Fillets of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove bones from the lamb and cut the meat into strips 1 inch thick.

  2. Flatten the strips to ¾ inch thickness using a cleaver.

Marinate

  1. In a bowl, mix olive oil, vinegar, coarse sea salt, onion, and parsley to create a marinade.

  2. Pour the marinade over the lamb strips, cover, and let marinate overnight or for several hours.

  3. Remove the vegetables from the lamb fillets.

Cook

  1. In a hot frying pan, sauté the fillets using as little butter as possible.

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. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  2. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Lamb + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a tender, browned fillet.
Olive oil
Carries the marinade flavors and keeps the lamb moist while it marinates.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade helps tenderize the meat and adds a sharp, bright note.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavor to the marinade as it soaks into the meat.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor for sautéing and helps the surface brown.

The step that matters

Sautéing the fillets. A very hot pan with little butter lets the surface brown quickly and sear the meat. Crowding the pan or using too much butter steams the fillets, which keeps them grey and soft.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, olive, vinegar, parsley, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, olive, vinegar, parsley, butter. 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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