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Lamb Cutlets with Cucumbers

Lamb cutlets served with a cucumber mixture stewed in stock and seasoned with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Lamb Cutlets with Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel and cut the cucumbers lengthwise, then soak them in vinegar for 1 hour.

  2. Stew the cucumbers in good stock until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, flour, and essence of lemon with a little stock.

  2. Add this mixture to the stewed cucumbers and stir well.

Serve

  1. Arrange the fried lamb cutlets around a serving dish and pour the cucumber mixture 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. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  2. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cucumber + lambtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together269 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Cucumbers
Stewing softens them and they give the dish its main body and fresh flavour.
Egg yolks
They thicken the stock-based mixture as they set with gentle heat, giving a creamy texture.
Flour
Starch helps stabilise the sauce and thicken it along with the egg yolks.
Lamb cutlets
Frying browns their surface, adding savoury flavour and aroma to the dish.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk mixture to the stewed cucumbers. Egg yolks can curdle if they get too hot too quickly. Stir the mixture in gently off the heat or over low heat so it thickens smoothly instead of turning grainy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, egg, flour, lamb):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Cherryfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, egg, flour, lamb. 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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