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Mutton Cutlets a LA Bretonne

Mutton cutlets served with a purée of haricot beans and brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mutton Cutlets a LA Bretonne

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Trim and pare the cutlets neatly.

  2. Fry the cutlets in a sauté pan with butter, turning frequently to brown both sides.

  3. Remove the cutlets, drain, and keep hot.

Make the bean purée

  1. Mince the peeled onions and fry them in the remaining butter until golden.

  2. Pour off some butter and add it to the haricot beans.

  3. Cook the beans for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently, and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Moisten with a little brown sauce and rub through a wire sieve.

  5. Reheat the purée, heap it in the center of a dish, and arrange the cutlets around it.

  6. Serve with rich brown sauce.

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. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  2. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Browning in butter gives the meat a savoury crust and flavour.
Haricot beans
Cooked and puréed, they form the thick, smooth base of the dish.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the cutlets and onions and enriches the beans.
Onions
Frying them until golden adds sweetness and savoury depth to the purée.

The step that matters

Rubbing the beans through a wire sieve. Pushing cooked beans through a sieve breaks down their cell walls and removes skins, producing a smooth purée; leftover lumps or skins make the texture grainy.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Sesamefits about as well
  3. Lima beansfits less well
  4. Peasfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, butter, pepper, sauce. 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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