Skip to main content
Main

Lamb Chops

A lamb dish simmered in butter, bacon fat, parsley, onion, lemon, pepper, salt, and finished with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lamb Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rinse the lamb dice in clear water and wipe them dry with a cloth.

  2. Flour the lamb pieces.

Make the gravy

  1. In a pot, melt the bacon fat and butter, then add the chopped parsley and boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the lamb dice, onion, lemon juice, pepper, and salt to the pot.

  3. Let it simmer gradually for 2 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolks and add them to the gravy, stirring for 3 minutes over heat.

  2. Dish and serve.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering in the gravy.
Bacon fat and butter
Add richness and fat that carry flavor and give the gravy a smooth mouthfeel.
Egg yolks
Thicken the gravy and add richness as their proteins set with gentle heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich fats and balances the flavor.
Onion
Contributes aroma and a mild sweetness as it cooks down in the gravy.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the gravy. Egg yolk proteins set at moderate heat, so if the gravy is too hot or stirred too little, the yolks can scramble and curdle instead of thickening it smoothly. Keep the heat gentle and stir constantly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, parsley, lemon, pepper, egg. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes