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Beef Cutlet Sauté

A quick pan‑sauté of seasoned beef cutlets finished with butter and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef Cutlet Sauté

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the butter with chopped parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. Prepare the cutlets as for broiling.

Cook

  1. Heat a small frying pan.

  2. Add a small piece of dissolved butter to the pan.

  3. Place the cutlet in the pan.

  4. Cook gently for 30 seconds.

  5. Turn the cutlet.

  6. Cook for another 30 seconds.

  7. Continue turning until the cutlet is done.

Serve

  1. If desired, sprinkle chopped parsley on the cutlet before serving.

  2. Transfer the cutlet to a hot plate.

  3. Pour any pan gravy over it.

  4. Serve immediately while hot.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Parsley + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

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

  5. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef cutlets
Form the main body of the dish, cooked through in a hot pan.
Butter
Melts in the pan to add richness and help the cutlet brown lightly.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma and a green finish.

The step that matters

Cooking the cutlet gently in a small pan. Cooking gently in short turns lets the heat reach the centre before the outside over-browns or dries. Turning it repeatedly and checking doneness helps keep the meat tender and evenly cooked.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Sagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, beef. 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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