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Mutton Steaks with French Beans

A dish of mutton steaks served over sautéed French beans with egg yolk and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mutton Steaks with French Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Dress and drain the French beans.

  2. Simmer the beans with pepper, coarse sea salt, and butter for a few minutes.

  3. Before serving, add the beaten yolks of two eggs and shake the pan over the heat without boiling.

Cook the mutton and serve

  1. Season the mutton steaks with pepper, coarse sea salt, and bread crumbs.

  2. Boil or fry the mutton steaks until cooked, then serve on top of the French beans.

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

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

  2. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Beans + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together332 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the beans into a creamy sauce as they gently set with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the beans.
Bread crumbs
Coat the mutton steaks, adding light texture and some browning when fried.
Mutton steaks
The main protein, cooked by boiling or frying until done.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks without boiling. Egg yolk proteins set at around 65 to 70 degrees Celsius and can curdle or scramble if the mixture boils, so the pan should be shaken over gentle heat only.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Peasfits better
  2. Lima beansfits better
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, egg, mutton, 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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