Skip to main content
Main

Lamb — Continued

Braised lamb neck cutlets coated in breadcrumbs and fried, served around a croustade of asparagus peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lamb and asparagus work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 207 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lamb — Continued

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Saw off the breasts from the necks of lamb.

  2. Trim the cutlets.

  3. Remove the tendons from the breasts and tie the tendons together.

  4. Place the breasts in a stewpan with a little stock, the onion with cloves, and sweet herbs.

  5. Braise the breasts until tender.

  6. Drain the meat.

  7. Remove the bones.

  8. Sprinkle the meat with coarse sea salt.

  9. Press the meat between two plates until cold.

  10. Cut the meat into pieces the size and shape of cutlets.

Coat and shape

  1. Mask the pieces with reduced German sauce.

  2. Dip the pieces in breadcrumbs.

  3. Dip the pieces in beaten egg.

  4. Breadcrumb the pieces again.

  5. Point the bones with a sharp knife.

  6. Stick the bones into each piece of breast to resemble cutlets.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard or dripping in a frying pan.

  2. Fry the breast pieces until browned.

  3. Fry the neck cutlets in clarified butter.

  4. Place a croustade on a hot dish.

  5. Fill the croustade with asparagus peas.

  6. Arrange the neck and breast cutlets around the croustade.

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. Lamb + asparagustop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together207 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Clove + asparagustop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together192 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 necks
Provide the meat that is braised, pressed and shaped into the cutlets.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating on the cutlets when fried.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder so the breadcrumbs adhere to the meat.
Reduced german sauce
Coats the meat with a rich, flavourful layer that helps the crumbs stick.

The step that matters

Press the meat between two plates until cold. Pressing while the meat cools compacts the fibres and firms it, so the pieces hold their cutlet shape and do not crumble when cut and coated.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, onion, sauce, egg, butter, asparagus):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, onion, sauce, egg, butter, asparagus. 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

Asparagus SoupAsparagus Soup179 recipesAsparagus SaladAsparagus Salad77 recipesCream of AsparagusCream of Asparagus38 recipesBoiled AsparagusBoiled Asparagus27 recipes