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Fresh Meat Cutlets

Fresh meat cutlets made from minced mutton or beef mixed with ginger, onions, mint, and spices, then fried in ghee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mint and ginger work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 647 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fresh Meat Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mince the meat and mix it with grated ginger, minced onions, chopped mint, and minced green chillies if using.

  2. Add salt, pepper, the raw egg, and the slice of bread soaked in water and squeezed dry.

  3. Mix everything well, form into round balls, and flatten each ball into cutlet shapes over bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the cutlets in ghee until they are nicely browned.

  2. For gravy, pour a little hot water into the pan used for frying, stir for a minute, and pour over the cutlets in a deep dish.

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. Mint + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  3. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

  4. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton or beef
Provides the main body and protein structure of the cutlets.
Fresh egg
Binds the minced meat so the cutlets hold their shape while frying.
Bread slice
Soaked and squeezed, it adds moisture and softness to the mixture.
Ghee
Fat that fries the cutlets and promotes a golden brown crust.
Onions
Add sweetness and moisture as they soften through the mixture.
Bread crumbs
Coat the shaped cutlets so their surface browns and resists sticking.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets in ghee until nicely browned. Frying over steady heat browns the surface through Maillard reactions, creating flavour and a crisp crust. Too high heat can scorch the crumb coating before the centre cooks through.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, egg, ghee, onion, ginger, pepper, bread):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, egg, ghee, onion, ginger, pepper, bread. 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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