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Saddle of Lamb Aux Petits Pois

A roasted lamb saddle served atop a sauce of boiled green peas, butter, sugar, arrowroot, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Saddle of Lamb Aux Petits Pois

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the lamb

  1. Roast the saddle of lamb or small mutton with vegetables as you would a fillet of beef.

  2. Brown it using a salamander.

Make the peas

  1. In a stewpan, combine the boiled green peas, butter, sugar, arrowroot, and cream.

  2. Shake the mixture over the heat until well combined.

Serve

  1. Pour the peas into a serving dish and place the roasted saddle on top.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Peas + arrowroottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Saddle of lamb or small mutton
Forms the main meat, cooked by roasting and finished by browning.
Green peas
Form the bulk of the side dish and give it its fresh, sweet flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, glossy texture to the peas.
Arrowroot
Thickens the cream and butter mixture so it holds together rather than running.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the peas into a creamy mixture.

The step that matters

Shake the peas over the heat until well combined. Arrowroot thickens when heated with liquid, so the mixture must be heated enough to thicken evenly. Stirring or shaking keeps it from scorching and forming lumps, which would leave the peas uneven in texture.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, peas, butter, sugar, cream):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, peas, butter, sugar, cream. 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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