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Meat Cutlet

A bread‑coated, spiced meat cutlet fried in ghee, served with mustard, boiled potatoes, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 121 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Meat Cutlet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the paste

  1. Soak the bread slices in water for 1 to 2 minutes, then squeeze out the water.

  2. Make a paste with the soaked bread, eggs, powdered pepper, pasted onion, and green chillies.

Prepare the meat

  1. Tenderize the meat slices by thrashing both sides with a stone.

  2. Mix the meat slices with the spice paste and let them marinate for about an hour.

  3. Coat the marinated meat slices in powdered biscuits.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the coated meat slices in plenty of ghee until golden brown.

  2. Serve with mustard, slices of boiled potatoes, and onions.

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. Biscuit + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together121 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Onion + biscuittop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 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

Bread
Soaked and squeezed, it binds the spice paste and keeps the meat moist.
Eggs
Bind the paste together so it clings to the meat slices.
Meat
The main component; tenderized by pounding to soften its fibres.
Powdered biscuits
Form a crisp, browned outer coating when fried.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma to the spice paste.

The step that matters

Frying the coated slices in ghee. Frying over steady heat in plenty of ghee browns the crumb coating and cooks the meat through. Too low a heat soaks the coating in fat, and too high a heat burns it before the meat is cooked inside.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, pepper, meat, biscuit, ghee, mustard. 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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