Skip to main content
Main

Lamb Cutlets and Green Peas

Lamb cutlets served with boiled green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lamb and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 896 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lamb Cutlets and Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Cut the cutlets from the best end of the neck of lamb.

  2. Chop off the thick part of the chine bone and trim the cutlets by removing the skin and excess fat.

  3. Scrape the upper end of the bone clean.

Coat the cutlets

  1. Brush each cutlet with beaten egg yolk.

  2. Sprinkle with seasoned bread crumbs (pepper, salt, nutmeg).

  3. Dip each cutlet in clarified butter and sprinkle more crumbs on top.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in a pan with butter, lard, or dripping until golden brown.

  2. Serve with boiled green peas arranged in a pyramid in the center of the dish.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the meaty flavor and fat that browns in the pan.
Eggs
Egg yolk brushed on the cutlets helps the bread crumbs adhere to the meat.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust when fried in fat.
Beef or mutton dripping, or lard
Conducts heat for frying and promotes browning and a rich flavor.
Clarified butter
Adds fat that helps the crumb coating brown evenly and adds a nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. Frying over steady heat browns the crumb crust before the thick cutlet cooks through. Too hot and the crumbs burn outside while the meat stays underdone inside.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes