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Lentil Cutlets

Lentil cutlets are pan‑fried patties made from cooked lentils, bread crumbs, mashed potatoes, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lentil Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lentils

  1. Cook the lentils until tender, then press them through a colander.

Shape the cutlets

  1. Add bread crumbs and mashed potatoes to form a stiff paste.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and onion juice; mix thoroughly.

  3. Shape the mixture into neat cutlets.

Cook

  1. Place cutlets in a thickly buttered bag and cook for 15 minutes.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Lentils + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,221 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lentils + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together151 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Provide the main bulk and protein-based structure of the cutlets.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the mixture hold together as a stiff paste.
Mashed potatoes
Add starch that binds the mixture and gives it a soft, cohesive texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the savoury mixture.

The step that matters

Forming the stiff paste. If the mixture is too wet, the cutlets will not hold their shape. Bread crumbs and mashed potatoes absorb moisture and bind the lentils, so the paste must be firm enough to shape before cooking.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lentils, bread, potato, pepper, onion, butter):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, bread, potato, pepper, onion, butter. 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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