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Mutton Steaks with French Beans

Mutton steaks served with simmered French beans, seasoned with sea salt and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mutton Steaks with French Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Prepare French beans and simmer them with coarse sea salt and butter.

  2. Add the egg yolk and shake the pan over the heat for 1-2 minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Prepare mutton steaks by covering them with beaten egg and bread crumbs.

  2. Boil or fry the mutton steaks until cooked.

  3. Serve the mutton steaks on top of the French beans.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

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

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Beans + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together332 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton steaks
Form the main protein that is coated, cooked and served on the beans.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the mutton so the coating adheres during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp coating that browns when the steaks are fried.
Egg yolk
Enriches the beans with fat and body as it thickens briefly over the heat.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour to the simmering beans.

The step that matters

Shaking the egg yolk over the heat. Egg yolk thickens when heated but can scramble if it gets too hot or stays still. Keeping the pan moving spreads the heat and helps the yolk coat the beans smoothly.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Peasfits better
  2. Lima beansfits better
  3. Pecansfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, mutton, bread. 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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