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Mutton Cutlets with Potatoes

Mutton cutlets served with fried potatoes and a glaze of cullis and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Mutton Cutlets with Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Cut the loin of mutton into steaks and trim them neatly.

  2. Beat the steaks with a chopper and season with sweet herbs, shallots, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  3. Cook the steaks until nearly done, then let them cool on a dish.

Bread and fry

  1. Dip the cooled steaks in egg, coat with breadcrumbs, and fry in boiling lard until light brown.

  2. Peel and cut the potatoes into slices, then fry them until lightly colored.

  3. Keep the fried potatoes warm by the fire until ready to serve.

Plate and sauce

  1. Arrange the steaks around a dish, leaving a cavity in the center for the potatoes.

  2. Add a little cullis and ketchup to the sauce from the steaks, strain, and reduce it to a glaze.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Shallot + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together272 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Loin of mutton
Forms the main body of the cutlets, giving them their meaty texture and flavour.
Egg
Acts as the binder that helps breadcrumbs stick to the steaks.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried in lard.
Shallots
Add a mild onion-like aroma that flavours the meat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the meat's flavour.
Potatoes
Fry to a lightly coloured, crisp exterior while staying tender inside.

The step that matters

Cook the steaks until nearly done, then cool them before coating. Cooking the steaks only to nearly done leaves room for the final frying without overcooking the meat. Cooling them first keeps the egg and breadcrumb coating from steaming off and becoming soggy in the hot lard.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, shallot, pepper, lemon, egg, sauce, ketchup):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, shallot, pepper, lemon, egg, sauce, ketchup. 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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