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Lamb a LA Poulette

A lamb stew with cream sauce, fried cutlets, served in a crown shape.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Lamb a LA Poulette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stew

  1. Scald the lamb and cut it into pieces.

  2. In a stewpan, melt the butter and mix in the flour.

  3. Add the hot stock and stir until well combined.

  4. Add the lamb pieces, sweet herbs, pepper, salt, onion, bay leaf, and mushrooms.

Make the cutlets

  1. Braise the breast, flatten it, and cut into cutlet shapes.

  2. Sprinkle bread crumbs on the cutlets, dip them in beaten egg yolks, season, and fry in melted butter until golden.

  3. Cut the neck into cutlets, season, and fry or broil them.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix the egg yolks with the cream and add to the stew before serving.

  2. Arrange the cutlets in a crown shape on a dish, alternating with the breast, and serve the blanquette in the middle.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 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
Provides the meat that becomes tender and rich during the slow stewing.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and carries flavor into the stew and the cutlet coating.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, light sauce when cooked with the butter.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce at the end, giving it a silky, velvety texture.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the sauce, mellowing its flavor and texture.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savoriness and moisture to the stew.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolk and cream mixture to the stew before serving. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the stew boils after they are added they can curdle and turn grainy. Stir them in gently off the heat or over very low heat so the sauce stays smooth and velvety.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, flour, pepper, mushroom, egg, 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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