Skip to main content
Main

A Bread-crumbed Mutton Cutlet

A breaded mutton cutlet fried in dripping or lard, optionally finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

A Bread-crumbed Mutton Cutlet

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C) if using butter.

  2. Heat the dripping or lard in a frying pan until very hot.

  3. Coat the mutton cutlet in bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry the cutlet in the hot dripping or lard for about 7 minutes.

  2. If using butter, ensure the heat is moderate to prevent burning.

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. Bread + buttertop 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. Mutton + buttertop 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 cutlet
Provides the meat, which cooks through in the hot fat while the coating crisps.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating that protects the meat from drying out.
Dripping or lard
Conducts heat to cook the cutlet and browns the crumb coating through frying.

The step that matters

Frying in very hot fat. The fat must be very hot before the cutlet goes in. The crumbs set and brown quickly on contact, forming a crust that limits how much fat is absorbed. Fat that is not hot enough soaks into the coating, making it greasy and pale.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes