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Mutton Cutlets, with Tomato Sauce

Mutton cutlets coated in breadcrumbs and fried, served with a tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Mutton Cutlets, with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Trim off all fat, pith, and gristle from the cutlets, and bare the bone about 1.5 inches.

  2. Dip each cutlet in oiled butter and coat both sides with fine bread crumbs.

Fry the cutlets

  1. Fry the cutlets slowly in plenty of lard until pale brown, about 20 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, mix the tomato sauce with the baked flour and fresh butter, stirring for 10 minutes. Add the vinegar to the sauce.

  2. Pour the sauce into the center of a dish and arrange the cutlets around it.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton cutlets
Provide the meat, which is cooked through and browned by slow frying in lard.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns during frying and protects the meat.
Baked flour
Thickens the tomato sauce as it is stirred with the butter and heated.
Tomato sauce
Forms the base of the sauce, adding moisture, acidity and flavour.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and smoothness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the cutlets slowly in lard. Slow frying in plenty of fat cooks the meat through while the crumb browns evenly. Frying too hot can scorch the coating before the centre is cooked.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, bread, sauce, flour, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, bread, sauce, flour, vinegar. 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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