Skip to main content
Main

Lentil and Cheese Cutlets

A fried cutlet made from lentils, potatoes, cheese, butter, egg yolk, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lentils and potato work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 151 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentil and Cheese Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the lentils until tender, then sieve them along with the cooked potatoes.

  2. Mix the lentils, potatoes, grated cheese, butter, egg yolk, and seasoning together.

  3. Shape the mixture into cutlet forms.

Coat and fry

  1. Coat each cutlet with egg and breadcrumbs.

  2. Fry the cutlets in deep fat 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. Lentils + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together151 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  4. Potato + cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together959 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Provide the bulk and body of the cutlet, holding its shape when cooked and sieved.
Cooked potatoes
Add starch and softness that help bind the mixture and keep the cutlets moist.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and richness, and helps the cutlets brown when fried.
Egg yolk
Acts as a binder that helps the mixture hold together while shaping.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Shape and coat the cutlets firmly. If the mixture is too wet or loosely shaped, cutlets can fall apart in the hot fat. Sieved lentils and potatoes bind best when well mixed, and the egg and breadcrumb coating forms a crisp shell that protects the inside while frying.

Swap the lentils

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, cheese, butter, egg):

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Peanutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, cheese, butter, 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipes