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Vegetable Cutlets

Vegetable cutlets are fried, breaded wedges of boiled turnip, potato, and peas in a thickened milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Vegetable Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Steam or boil the diced turnip and potato until tender, then drain.

  2. Wash the peas and let them stand in cold water for 30 minutes, then drain very dry.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter, add flour, and gradually whisk in the milk until thickened.

  2. Season the sauce with salt, white pepper, and onion juice.

  3. Mix in the turnips, potatoes, and half of the peas.

Set and shape

  1. Butter a shallow pan and spread half of the reserved peas on the bottom.

  2. Pour the vegetable mixture over the peas and top with the remaining peas, pressing them in lightly.

  3. Let the mixture cool and firm up.

  4. Turn it out onto a board, cut into wedges or trefoils.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each piece in beaten egg and roll in dry crumbs.

  2. Fry in deep oil until golden brown and decorate with a green frill.

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

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

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 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

White turnip
Provides the bulk of the filling and a mild, slightly sweet body.
Irish potato
Adds starch and softness that help the mixture hold together when cooled.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce that binds the vegetables.
Milk
Forms the creamy sauce that moistens the vegetables.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds flavour to the filling.
Egg
Coats the cutlets so the crumbs stick and then brown during frying.

The step that matters

Drain the peas very dry. Excess water from the peas would thin the sauce and make the cutlets soggy and prone to breaking apart when frying.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, potato, peas, butter, flour, milk, onion):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, potato, peas, butter, flour, milk, onion. 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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