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Fifty Lunches

Mutton cutlets served with a spinach, cabbage lettuce, and onion puree, finished with cream and garnished with watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 427 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Fifty Lunches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Cut the neck of mutton into neat cutlets and trim them.

  2. Season the cutlets with pepper and salt.

  3. Marinate the cutlets overnight.

Make the spinach and lettuce purée

  1. Melt butter in a quart stewpan over low heat.

  2. Add the finely shredded onion and fry until pale yellow.

  3. Stir in the flour, spinach, and finely cut lettuce.

  4. Cook the vegetables until they change color.

  5. Add ¼ pint of broth and stir well.

  6. Add sugar, salt, and black pepper.

  7. Add another ½ cup of broth.

  8. Simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  9. Pass the mixture through a wire sieve.

  10. Stir in cream.

Grill and serve

  1. Drain the cutlets from the marinate and wipe them dry.

  2. Dip them in melted butter.

  3. Grill over a clear fire.

  4. Prepare a border of pounded rice.

  5. Fill it with the hot puree.

  6. Arrange the cutlets around the outside.

  7. Garnish with bunches of watercress.

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. Spinach + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  4. Spinach + cabbagetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together190 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Pepper + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton neck
Provides the meat for the cutlets, which is seasoned and marinated before grilling.
Spinach
Gives the purée its body, green colour and fresh, earthy flavour.
Cabbage lettuce
Adds soft vegetable bulk and a mild sweetness to the purée.
Butter
Enriches the purée with fat and gives the cutlets a rich, browned coating.
Flour
Thickens the vegetable mixture as it cooks with the broth.
Broth
Supplies the liquid that cooks the vegetables into a smooth purée.

The step that matters

Grill over a clear fire. Cutlets need a very hot, steady fire so the outside browns and sears while the inside stays juicy. A smoky or uneven fire can char the outside before the meat is cooked through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, spinach, cabbage, lettuce, butter, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, spinach, cabbage, lettuce, butter, flour. 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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