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Nut Cutlets

Nut Cutlets are fried balls or cakes made from nuts, breadcrumbs, mashed potatoes, parsley, onion, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Brazil nut and almond share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Nut Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine chopped nuts, bread crumbs, mashed potatoes, parsley, and onion.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix them with the other ingredients.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Form the mixture into balls or cakes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each ball or cake in beaten eggs, then coat with crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot oil 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. Brazil nut + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together68 recipes

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

  2. Brazil nut + walnuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Walnut + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

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

  4. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and form a coating that helps the cutlets hold together.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and softness so the cutlets stay tender inside.
Bread crumbs
Add body to the mixture and form a crisp outer coating when fried.
Chopped nuts
Provide the main body, richness and nutty flavor of the cutlets.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until golden brown. If the oil is not hot enough, the coated cutlets absorb excess oil and turn greasy, while the crumb coating may not set and crisp properly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nuts, brazil nut, walnut, almond, bread, potato, parsley):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nuts, brazil nut, walnut, almond, bread, potato, parsley. 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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