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Cutlets and Green Peas

Lamb cutlets coated in seasoned breadcrumbs and fried, served with boiled green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cutlets and Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Cut the cutlets from the best end of the neck of lamb.

  2. Chop off the thick part of the chine bone and trim the cutlets by removing the skin and excess fat. Scrape the upper end of the bone clean.

Coat the cutlets

  1. Brush each cutlet with beaten egg yolk.

  2. Sprinkle with seasoned bread crumbs mixed with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  3. Dip each cutlet in clarified butter and sprinkle more crumbs on top.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in a pan with butter, lard, or dripping until golden brown.

  2. Serve with boiled green peas arranged in a pyramid in the center of 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Bread + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  4. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Forms the main body of the dish, with fat that renders and flavours the cutlets as they cook.
Eggs
Egg yolk brushed on the cutlets acts as a binder so the crumbs stick.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust when fried in fat.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and helps the crumb coating brown evenly during frying.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. Frying over steady heat in enough fat browns the crumb coating before the lamb inside overcooks. Too little heat leaves the crust pale and greasy, while too much burns it before the meat is done.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, egg, nutmeg, pepper, bread, butter. 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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