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Mutton Cutlets

Mutton cutlets seasoned with salt, pepper, cayenne, bay leaf, mace, ham or bacon, served with mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 340 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the mutton cutlets, removing gristle and fat, and cut them about ⅓ inch thick.

  2. Beat the cutlets with a rolling pin dipped in water.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the cutlets over a brisk fire until cooked to your liking.

  2. Serve with mashed potatoes in the center of the dish.

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. Onion + arrowroottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + arrowroottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together329 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mutton + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together430 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Best end of the neck of mutton
Provides the meat itself, whose fat and connective tissue give the cutlets their flavour and juiciness.
Mashed potatoes (in the method)
Serves as a starchy side that soaks up meat juices on the plate.

The step that matters

Broil the cutlets over a brisk fire until cooked to your liking. A brisk fire sears the outside quickly, browning the surface while the inside stays tender. Cooking too long dries out lean mutton, so the cutlets should be checked for doneness as they cook.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, butter, onion, ham, sauce, arrowroot):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, butter, onion, ham, sauce, arrowroot. 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.

More mutton cutlets recipes

Braised 15Portuguese 12Broiled 10Breaded 9Cold 6with Green Peas 6 See all 120 →

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