Why it works: Thyme and rosemary match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,340 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓
Lamb Cutlets
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the lamb
Place the lamb pieces in a stewpan with onion, herbs, peppercorns, and a little salt.
Cover with cold water and cook gently for 2 hours.
Make the sauce
Melt the butter in a separate pan.
Add the flour to the melted butter and stir for a few minutes without browning.
Strain 1 pint of the cooking liquid from the lamb and add it to the flour and butter mixture.
Stir the mixture until it boils, then simmer for 3-4 minutes.
Beat the egg yolks and cream together.
Stir the egg yolk-cream mixture into the sauce and cook gently without boiling.
Serve
Arrange the cooked lamb on a hot dish.
Strain the sauce over the lamb and serve.
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.
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Thyme + rosemarytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,340 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,171 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Lamb + rosemarytop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together396 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Lamb
- Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle cooking in water.
- Butter
- Enriches the sauce with fat and flavour and forms the base for the roux.
- Flour
- Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked briefly with butter.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a richer, silkier texture.
- Cream
- Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smoother, more velvety mouthfeel.
The step that matters
Cooking the sauce after adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat. If the sauce boils after the yolk-cream mixture goes in, the yolks can scramble and the sauce can curdle and turn grainy.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, thyme, rosemary, butter, flour, egg, cream):
- Potatofits better
- Shallotfits better
- Chivefits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, thyme, rosemary, butter, flour, egg, cream. 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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