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Durham Cutlets

A cutlet made from minced meat, bread crumbs, and a sauce, with a macaroni filling, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Durham Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt butter in a pan.

  2. Whisk in stock, flour, pepper, salt, and Worcestershire sauce.

  3. Mix minced meat with the sauce and bread crumbs in a bowl.

  4. Spread the mixture on a plate to cool firmly and evenly using a floured knife.

Shape and coat

  1. Cut into triangular pieces starting from the center of the plate.

  2. Flour your board and fingers.

  3. Shape each piece into a neat cutlet.

  4. Insert a 1-inch piece of macaroni into the narrow end of each cutlet.

  5. Brush each cutlet with beaten egg.

  6. Dip each cutlet in bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot fat until golden brown.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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

Minced meat
Forms the main body of the cutlet and gives it its savoury flavour.
Bread crumbs
Bulk the filling and form the crisp golden coating on the outside.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds fat for flavour and browning.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce that binds the mixture so it can be shaped.
Egg
Binds the coating so the bread crumbs stick to each cutlet.

The step that matters

Spread the mixture to cool firmly and evenly. If the mixture is not chilled and set firm and even, it will be too soft to cut and shape cleanly, and uneven thickness will cook unevenly in the hot fat.

“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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