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Lamb Cutlets

Lamb cutlets coated in parsley, nutmeg, lemon zest, and breadcrumbs, fried in clarified beef suet, served with melted butter and lemon pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the lamb loin into round cutlets and trim off the fat and skin.

  2. Dip each cutlet into the beaten egg yolk, then coat with bread crumbs mixed with parsley, nutmeg, lemon zest, pepper, and salt.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the cutlets in clarified beef suet until light brown.

  2. Drain the cutlets on a sieve before the fire.

  3. Serve with melted butter and a little lemon pickle, or a thickened brown sauce.

  4. Garnish with cut lemon.

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 + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Lamb + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Binds the bread crumb coating so it sticks to the cutlets.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden coating around the lamb when fried.
Lemon zest
Adds bright aromatic flavour that cuts the richness of the lamb.

The step that matters

Frying until light brown. Frying in hot fat browns the crumb coating and cooks the lamb through. Too low a heat leaves the coating greasy and pale, while too high a heat burns the crumbs before the meat is done.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

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