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Neck of Lamb with Spinach

Neck of lamb cutlets served on spinach finished with cream or white sauce, garnished with buttered new potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and potato work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 646 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Neck of Lamb with Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Pick and wash the spinach leaves, discarding bruised ones.

  2. Boil salted water in a large pot.

  3. Plunge the spinach into the boiling water for 5 minutes.

  4. Drain the spinach in a sieve.

  5. Rinse the spinach with cold water.

  6. Press out the moisture from the spinach.

  7. Chop the spinach.

Cook the spinach

  1. Place the chopped spinach in a casserole with melted butter.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, and mace.

  3. Stir over moderate heat for 10 minutes.

  4. Add cream or white sauce to finish.

Roast and serve the lamb

  1. Roast the neck of lamb.

  2. Sever the neck of lamb into cutlets.

  3. Arrange the cutlets on a hot dish.

  4. Brush the cutlets with melted glaze.

  5. Garnish with buttered new potatoes.

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. Spinach + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together646 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the bulk of the dish, its leaves wilting into a soft, tender mass when stirred with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, carrying flavour through the spinach and coating the cutlets.
Cream or white sauce
Adds body and smoothness, softening the spinach into a creamy, cohesive mixture.

The step that matters

Press out the moisture from the spinach. Spinach holds a lot of water. If it is not pressed dry before cooking with butter and cream, the dish turns watery and the sauce thins.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, butter, cream, pepper, potato):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, butter, cream, pepper, potato. 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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