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Lamb Chops a LA Maintenon

Lamb chops coated in egg and breadcrumbs, fried until golden, served with optional spinach or mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and spinach work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 300 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Lamb Chops a LA Maintenon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Dip the lamb chops in the egg, then coat them with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the breaded lamb chops in hot oil until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with spinach or mashed potatoes, placing the vegetable in the center and arranging the chops around it.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Lamb + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + spinachtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Egg + spinachtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb chops
The main meat; frying browns the outside while the inside cooks through.
Egg
Acts as a binder that helps the bread crumbs stick to the chops.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that protects the meat during frying.
Oil
Conducts heat for frying and browns the breaded coating.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until golden brown. Hot oil sets the egg and crumb coating quickly and browns it, so the crust crisps instead of soaking up grease. Oil that is too cool lets the coating absorb fat and turn soggy, while the meat may cook unevenly.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, egg, bread):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachthe original
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

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