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Lamb Chops Stewed with Cucumbers

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 Chops Stewed with Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the lamb chops until light brown.

  2. Stew the chops in good gravy for 30 minutes.

  3. Thicken and flavor the gravy.

  4. Add thickly sliced cucumbers that have been previously stewed.

  5. Boil everything together.

  6. Serve the cucumbers on the dish first, then place the chops on top.

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

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 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

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, flour, butter, mushroom, lemon, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, flour, butter, mushroom, lemon, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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