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Lamb Cutlets with Peas

Lamb cutlets served with spinach and optional green peas, accompanied by sauce Robert.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and peas work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 550 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Lamb Cutlets with Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Boil plenty of water with 1 teaspoon of salt per quart.

  2. Add spinach and boil for 3-4 minutes with the lid off.

  3. Drain and press out all the water from the spinach.

  4. Rub the spinach through a wire sieve.

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan. Stir in flour.

  2. Add stock and boil for 4 minutes.

  3. Season and mix with the spinach.

Shape and serve

  1. Press into a well-buttered mold.

  2. Turn out the spinach onto a hot dish.

  3. Arrange the lamb cutlets around it.

  4. Serve with sauce Robert or green peas in the center.

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 + peastop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together550 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lamb + peastop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 cutlets
Form the main protein, cooked and arranged around the spinach as the centerpiece of the dish.
Spinach
Forms the bulk of the dish, giving the moulded body its color, moisture and soft texture.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and keeps the mold from sticking when it is turned out.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and stock into a smooth base that binds the spinach.
Stock
Liquid that cooks the flour into a savory base and adds seasoning depth.

The step that matters

Press out all the water from the spinach. Excess water dilutes the thickened base and makes the spinach loose, so it will not hold its shape when turned out of the mold.

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, spinach, butter, flour, sauce):

  1. Cashew nutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, spinach, butter, flour, sauce. 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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