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Mutton Cutlets with Provinale Sauce

Mutton cutlets served with a cream-like sauce made from butter, flour, water, thyme, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mutton Cutlets with Provinale Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream sauce

  1. Melt the butter over medium heat and add the chopped onion.

  2. Stir in the flour gradually.

  3. Add the water and thyme.

  4. Season with pepper and salt.

  5. Stir constantly until the mixture thickens to a cream-like consistency.

  6. Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolks.

Cook the cutlets

  1. Slightly cook the mutton cutlets on both sides in a hot skillet.

  2. Dip the cutlets in the sauce.

  3. Place the cutlets in a pot of hot fat.

  4. Fry until the cutlets float on top of the fat, rolling them in cracker dust and bread crumbs occasionally.

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. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries the onion flavour as it melts.
Flour
Thickens the sauce into a cream-like consistency as it cooks with the liquid.
Egg yolks
Stirred in off the heat to enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a creamy body.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned coating on the cutlets when fried.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Removing the pan from the heat first keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, thyme, pepper, egg, bread. 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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