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Baked Mutton Cutlets

Baked mutton cutlets served with a gravy made from reduced broth, butter, and tomato ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Mutton Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Trim the mutton cutlets and place the bits of bone and skin in a pot with 1 pint of cold water to make gravy.

  2. Pour melted butter over the cutlets and set them over hot water for 15 minutes.

  3. Dip each cutlet in egg, then in rolled crackers, and place them in a dripping pan with a little water.

Bake and make the gravy

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C), basting with butter and water.

  2. Once the gravy has reduced to 1 cup, strain it into a saucepan and season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and tomato ketchup.

  3. Thicken the gravy with browned flour and strain in the drippings from the pan.

Serve

  1. Simmer the cutlets in the gravy for 10 minutes, then arrange them on a dish and serve the gravy separately.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Ketchup + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Mutton cutlets
Provide the meat that is cooked and served, with bones and skin simmered for flavourful gravy.
Egg
Binds the cracker coating so it adheres to each cutlet during baking.
Rolled crackers
Form a crisp, browned crust around the cutlets as they bake.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasty, deeper colour and flavour.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the cutlets brown while basting.

The step that matters

Basting during baking. Basting with butter and water keeps the cutlets moist and helps the coating brown evenly rather than drying or scorching in the hot oven.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mutton, egg, pepper, ketchup, flour. 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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