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Mutton Cutlets with Sorrel Sauce

Mutton cutlets served with a sauce of butter, onion, sorrel, and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorrel and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 317 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Cutlets with Sorrel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Divide the neck of mutton into neat cutlets.

  2. Season with pepper and salt, then marinate for the rest of the day.

Make the sorrel sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a little saucepan.

  2. Add the chopped onion, sorrel, and lettuce to the melted butter.

  3. Cook until the vegetables are soft, then serve with the mutton cutlets.

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. Sorrel + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + sorreltop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together419 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + sorreltop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together459 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

Neck of mutton
Forms the main protein of the cutlets and carries the meaty flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the sauce as it softens the vegetables.
Sorrel
Provides a sharp, lemony acidity that gives the sauce its character.
Lettuce
Softens into the sauce, adding body and a mild, fresh vegetable sweetness.
Bombay onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Cook the vegetables until soft. Sorrel and lettuce must cook gently in butter until fully soft; undercooked leaves stay fibrous and the sauce tastes raw, while overheating can dull the sorrel's bright acidity and make it bitter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, sorrel, lettuce, butter. 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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