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Minced Pork Cutlets

Small fried cutlets of minced roast pork and shallots, served with a brandy apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Minced Pork Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Mince the pork and shallots together.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, mustard, cayenne, sage, and baked flour.

  3. Add pork gravy and beaten egg; mix well.

  4. Form the mixture into 5 or 6 small cutlets of equal size.

  5. Dredge the cutlets in baked flour.

Fry and make the apple sauce

  1. Fry in plenty of boiling fat until pale brown, about 8 minutes.

  2. For the apple sauce, simmer apples, brown sugar, and brandy in a saucepan for 45 minutes.

  3. Beat the apple mixture until smooth.

Serve

  1. Serve the cutlets arranged around the apple sauce in the center.

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. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shallot + sagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together181 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + sagetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean roast pork
Forms the main body of the cutlets, providing meaty flavor and the bulk of the texture.
Egg
Binds the minced mixture so the cutlets hold their shape while frying.
Baked flour
Coats the cutlets so they brown evenly in the hot fat.
Apples
Break down into a smooth sauce that adds body and tartness to balance the rich pork.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the apple sauce and helps it caramelize slightly as it simmers.

The step that matters

Frying in plenty of boiling fat. The cutlets need enough hot fat to brown quickly on the outside while the inside cooks through. Too little or cooler fat lets them soak up oil and cook unevenly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, shallot, pepper, mustard, sage, flour, egg):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, shallot, pepper, mustard, sage, flour, egg. 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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