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Mutton Cutlets

Mutton cutlets are flattened pieces of neck mutton coated in egg and breadcrumbs, then broiled or fried and served with peas or mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Mutton Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove the backbone and upper bones from the neck of mutton, leaving cutlets about 4 to 5 inches long.

  2. Trim off all fat and sinew from the meat.

  3. Use a meat mallet to flatten the cutlets.

Cook and coat

  1. Broil the cutlets on a grill over a clear fire for 5 to 10 minutes, turning each minute.

  2. Dip the cutlets in beaten egg.

  3. Coat the cutlets with bread crumbs mixed with pepper and salt.

  4. Smooth the cutlets with a knife.

  5. Fry the cutlets in melted butter until golden brown.

  6. Drain the cutlets on paper.

Serve

  1. Serve the cutlets in a circle with peas or mashed potatoes in the center.

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. Bread + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

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

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton neck
Provides the meat for the cutlets, whose fat and sinew are trimmed away first.
Egg
Binds the bread crumb coating so it adheres to the cutlets during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp coating that browns during frying.
Butter
Fries the cutlets, adding richness and promoting golden browning.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets in melted butter until golden brown. Frying over steady heat browns the crumb coating through the Maillard reaction; too high a heat scorches the crumbs before the meat is cooked through, while too low a heat leaves the coating greasy and pale.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Peasthe original
  2. Lima beansfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits less well
  4. Beansfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, egg, bread, pepper, 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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