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Lamb Chops, with Herbs

Lamb chops seasoned with chives, parsley, thyme, tarragon, and lemon, served with a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Lamb Chops, with Herbs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chops

  1. Cut and trim lamb chops from the loin or neck.

  2. Dip the chops in clarified butter, then in a mixture of chives and parsley.

  3. Fry in hot fat until browned or broil over a clear fire.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, chop thyme, parsley, and tarragon leaves.

  2. Mix chopped herbs with butter and flour, then pour in boiling gravy.

  3. Simmer for 4-5 minutes, stirring to remove lumps.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, then add lemon juice.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolk.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish garnished with crisped parsley.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together528 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Chive + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together589 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb chops
Provide the main meat, which browns in hot fat or under a broiler.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the herb coating brown during frying.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by binding with the butter before the gravy is added.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce when stirred in off the heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat; if the sauce is too hot it can scramble and turn grainy. Removing the pan from the heat first keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, butter, chive, parsley, tarragon, egg, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymethe original
  3. Fennelfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, chive, parsley, tarragon, egg, flour. 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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