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Mutton Croquettes with Tomato Sauce

Mutton croquettes are fried meat cakes served with a tomato and onion sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Mutton Croquettes with Tomato Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the croquettes

  1. Chop the cold mutton or other meats very fine.

  2. Roll the crackers into fine crumbs and mix with the meat.

  3. Season to taste and moisten with milk or water.

  4. Mold the mixture into cakes and fry in butter until brown.

Make the tomato sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the tomatoes, cloves, bay leaf, salt, white pepper, and onion.

  2. Cover and simmer gently for 20 minutes.

  3. In another saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter with 2 tablespoons of flour over heat.

  4. Gradually add the strained tomatoes, stirring until the sauce is smooth.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

Cold mutton or other meats
Provides the main filling and savoury flavour of the croquettes.
Crackers
Fine crumbs bind the meat and give the croquettes body and structure.
Milk or water
Moistens the mixture so it holds together and stays tender when fried.
Butter
Fat that browns the outside of the croquettes and enriches the sauce.
Flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the tomato sauce.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity and body as the base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the strained tomatoes to the roux. Adding the liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour smooth, so lumps do not form and the sauce thickens evenly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, milk, butter, tomato, clove, onion, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, milk, butter, tomato, clove, onion, 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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