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Mutton Cutlets a Litalienne

Mutton cutlets served with sharp sauce, prepared by marinating, coating in egg yolks and breadcrumbs, then frying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Mutton Cutlets a Litalienne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Select a neck of mutton that has been aged for at least four days.

  2. Cut off the neck or scrag-end.

  3. Saw off the breast part, leaving the cutlet bones about 3.5 to 4 inches long.

  4. Cut as many cutlets as there are bones from the prepared neck of mutton.

  5. Trim the cutlets by removing sinewy parts and excess fat without damaging the fillet.

  6. Detach the meat about an inch from the end of each bone.

  7. Marinate the cutlets for 2 hours.

  8. Wipe the cutlets.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip them in 3 beaten egg yolks.

  2. Coat with breadcrumbs.

  3. Fry the cutlets in a sauté pan with clarified butter for 10 minutes, ensuring a golden color on both sides.

Serve

  1. Serve the cutlets in a circle with Sharp sauce on the side.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Mutton + saucetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

  5. Mutton + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Neck of mutton
Provides the meat for the cutlets, and its aging at least four days is specified to tenderize it.
Eggs
Egg yolks bind the breadcrumb coating to the cutlets.
Clarified butter
Fat for frying that browns the breadcrumb coating to a golden color.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets in clarified butter. The coating needs enough heat to turn golden on both sides without burning. Clarified butter tolerates higher heat than whole butter, which helps it brown evenly without scorching, and the cutlet must cook through before the crust darkens too far.

“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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