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Cold Meat Cutlets

Cold meat cutlets made with minced meat, onion, spices, egg, bread crumbs, and fried in ghee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and mint 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 ↓

Cold Meat Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the cold meat.

Make the mixture

  1. Add the spices, pepper, mint, ginger, green chillies, salt, and the juice from the minced onion.

  2. Incorporate the raw egg and the soaked and squeezed bread.

  3. Mix all ingredients thoroughly and form into cutlets.

Fry

  1. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and fry in ghee or dripping.

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. Ginger + minttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + gingertop 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. Pepper + minttop 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

Cold meat
Forms the bulk of the cutlets and provides the main flavour.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the cutlets hold their shape.
Bread crumbs
Soaked bread adds moisture and softness, while crumbs on the outside help browning.
Onion
Its juice adds moisture and savoury flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Forming and frying the cutlets. The raw egg and soaked bread make the mixture soft, so it can crack or fall apart if handled roughly or fried over high heat. Mixing thoroughly and chilling briefly helps the cutlets hold together.

Swap the mint

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

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

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