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French Steaks a Neck of Mutton

Stuffed mutton neck steaks seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and breadcrumbs, then wrapped and cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

French Steaks a Neck of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steaks

  1. Trim most of the fat from the neck of mutton.

  2. Cut the meat into 2-inch thick steaks.

  3. Make a hole in the center of each steak with a knife.

  4. Stuff the holes with a mixture of bread crumbs, beef fat, nutmeg, pepper, and salt mixed with the egg yolk.

Cook and serve

  1. Wrap each steak in wrapping paper.

  2. Place them in a Dutch oven or broil them before the fire for about an hour.

  3. Serve with a little brown gravy poured over the steaks.

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

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

  2. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 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

Neck of mutton
Provides the meat and fat that give the steaks their rich flavor and juiciness.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and fat, forming a soft stuffing that holds its shape.
Egg yolk
Binds the stuffing together and adds richness as it sets with heat.
Nutmeg
Adds warm aroma to the stuffing.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

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