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Lamb Cutlets with Spinach

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,400 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Lamb Cutlets with Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the steaks from the lamb loin and fry them.

  2. Stew the spinach and place it in the dish first.

  3. Arrange the fried cutlets around the spinach.

  4. In a separate pot, boil the lamb's head until very tender.

  5. Prepare the liver and lights by boiling them, then cut them small.

  6. Stew the liver and lights in a little of their boiling water, season with salt and pepper, and thicken with butter and flour.

  7. Serve the minced liver and lights around the boiled head.

  8. For the sweetbreads, blanch them and soak in cold water.

  9. In a stew-pan, combine the sweetbreads with broth, pepper, salt, small onions, and a blade of mace.

  10. Stir in butter and flour, and stew for half an hour.

  11. Beat the eggs with cream, minced parsley, and nutmeg, then add boiled asparagus tops.

  12. Heat the mixture without boiling after adding the cream, stirring continuously to prevent curdling.

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. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Spinach + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Spinach + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lamb + spinachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together300 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, spinach, butter, flour, pepper, onion, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, spinach, butter, flour, pepper, onion, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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