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Cnrry of Lamb I'Lidienne

A lamb curry simmered with onions, curry powder, and a lemon‑egg sauce, served with asparagus tops and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Cnrry of Lamb I'Lidienne

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the lamb

  1. Season lamb with salt and pepper.

  2. Add onions to the pot.

  3. Cook for 40 minutes with the lid on.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain the cooking liquid into another saucepan with roux blanc, stirring until it boils.

  2. Beat egg yolks with lemon juice.

  3. Gradually add the egg-lemon mixture to the sauce while stirring continuously.

  4. Pour the sauce over the lamb.

  5. Add cooked asparagus tops, being careful not to let it boil again.

Serve

  1. Serve with a border of hot cooked rice around the dish.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Asparagus + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together261 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Asparagus + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together704 recipes

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

  4. Onion + asparagustop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,212 recipes

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

  5. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set gently with heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the egg yolks.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and flavour that defines the lamb.
Onions
Soften during cooking and add sweetness and body to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the egg-lemon mixture. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat but scramble if the sauce gets too hot. Add the mixture slowly while stirring, and do not let the sauce boil again, or it will curdle.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, asparagus, egg, lemon, rice):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, asparagus, egg, lemon, rice. 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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