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Lamb Cutlets with Spinach

Lamb cutlets coated in breadcrumbs and fried, served with a warm spinach puree.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,400 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Lamb Cutlets with Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the lamb cutlets and brush them with beaten egg.

  2. Season the cutlets liberally with coarse sea salt and black pepper, then coat them with bread crumbs.

  3. Prepare the spinach puree as directed and keep it warm until needed.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat the butter in a sauté pan and fry the cutlets quickly until lightly browned on both sides, about 5 to 6 minutes.

  2. Drain the cutlets from fat and arrange them in a close circle on a hot dish.

  3. Pile the spinach puree in the center and pour the sauce around.

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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb cutlets
Provide the main meat, which is browned quickly to stay tender inside.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the cutlets so the coating adheres during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns during quick frying.
Butter
Conducts heat in the pan and adds fat for browning and flavour.
Spinach puree
Adds a moist, green vegetable base that complements the rich lamb.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets quickly over steady heat. Coated cutlets brown on the outside before the centre overcooks. Frying too hot can scorch the crumbs, while too gentle heat lets them soak up fat and turn greasy.

Swap the spinach

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

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

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