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Cold Meat Cutlets

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Cold Meat Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour, then add the stock, salt, pepper, and ketchup; boil for 3-4 minutes.

  3. Add the minced meat and bread crumbs; mix thoroughly.

  4. Spread the mixture on the center of a large dinner plate and set aside to cool.

  5. Divide the mixture into 12 equal parts and shape them like mutton cutlets.

  6. Insert about an inch of piped macaroni into the thin end of each cutlet.

  7. Beat the egg slightly and brush it over each cutlet.

  8. Roll the cutlets in the remaining bread crumbs.

  9. Fry in smoking-hot fat until light brown, then drain on soft paper.

  10. Arrange neatly in a ring on a folded serviette or lace paper and garnish with parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, ketchup, bread, egg):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, ketchup, bread, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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