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Lamb Cutlets with Celery

Lamb cutlets served with a celery sauce made from consommé, sauce, sugar, salt, butter, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lamb Cutlets with Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Trim the celery and cut it into pieces the size of a shilling.

  2. Blanch the celery in boiling water for a few minutes, then drain it.

Make the sauce

  1. In a small saucepan, combine the consommé, sauce, sugar, and salt.

  2. Add the celery and reduce the mixture gently until it thickens.

  3. Stir in the butter and lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Place the lamb cutlets on a serving dish and pour the sauce over them.

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. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Celery
Provides the main vegetable body and a crisp-tender texture in the sauce.
Consommé
Supplies the liquid base and savoury flavour that the sauce reduces into.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy finish to the thickened sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the sauce gently until it thickens. Gentle reduction concentrates flavour and thickens the liquid slowly. Boiling too hard can scorch the sugar and sauce or make the texture uneven.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, sugar, butter, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, sugar, butter, lemon. 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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