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Durham Cutlets

Cold meat cutlets with onion, butter, flour, stock, egg, and breadcrumbs, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Durham Cutlets

four portions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the meat and onion finely.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan; add flour, then stock, and cook thoroughly.

  3. Add the meat, onion, and seasonings, and mix well.

  4. Turn the mixture onto a plate to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Divide into four portions and shape into cutlets.

  2. Coat each cutlet in egg and breadcrumbs, then fry in deep fat.

  3. Garnish with fried parsley.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Cooked with butter and stock, it thickens the mixture so it binds and holds its shape.
Egg
Coats the cutlets so the breadcrumbs stick and the surface sets in the fryer.
Butter
Enriches the binding base and adds flavour and moisture to the filling.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried in deep fat.

The step that matters

Cook the flour and stock thoroughly. Flour must be cooked fully with the butter and stock so it thickens smoothly and loses its raw starchy taste. Under-cooked roux leaves the filling pasty and weakly bound, so the cutlets may crumble when shaped or fried.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, parsley, flour, pepper, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, parsley, flour, pepper, egg. 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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