Name: Mutton Cutlets in the Portuguese Way
Ingredients: Mutton chops; 1 shallot or onion, sliced; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; 2 bay leaves; Pepper, to taste; Coarse sea salt, to taste; White paper for wrapping

Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mutton Cutlets in the Portuguese Way

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the mutton chops.
Half fry them with sliced shallot or onion, chopped parsley, and bay leaves.
Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Wrap and cook

Lay a forcemeat on a piece of white paper, place the chops on it, and twist the paper up, leaving a hole for the end of the bones.
Broil the wrapped chops over a gentle fire.

Serve

Serve with sauce Robert or a little gravy.

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.

Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,898 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,442 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mutton + shallottop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together407 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton chops: Provide the main meat, whose fat and juices flavour and moisten the cutlet as it cooks.
Shallot or onion: Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens and browns in the fat.
Bay leaves: Contribute a subtle aromatic herbal flavour during frying.

The step that matters

Broil the wrapped chops over a gentle fire. A gentle heat lets the thick meat cook through and render its fat without scorching the paper or drying the surface. Too much heat chars the wrapping before the centre is done.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, parsley, pepper):

Carrotfits better
Shallotthe original
Capsicumfits about as well
Turnipfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, parsley, pepper. 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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Mutton Cutlets in the Portuguese Way