Skip to main content
Main

Entrees of Mutton

A dish of mutton cutlets coated with horseradish, butter, vinegar, and spices, simmered in Veloute sauce and finished with egg and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Entrees of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Remove the mutton cutlets from the fire.

  2. Let the cutlets cool in their own juices.

  3. Trim the cooled cutlets neatly.

Make the coating

  1. Coat one side of each cutlet with a mixture of grated horseradish, butter, vinegar, mignonette pepper, nutmeg, and sugar.

  2. Cover the mixture and stew gently for 20 minutes.

  3. Add Veloute sauce and boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Mix in egg yolks and glaze.

Finish and serve

  1. Brush the coated side of the cutlets with beaten egg white.

  2. Sprinkle the cutlets with fried bread crumbs.

  3. Arrange the cutlets in a sauté pan with half glaze.

  4. Warm them in the oven at 300°F (150°C) for 15 minutes without browning.

  5. Serve with a small paper ruffle on the bone.

  6. Pour half glaze underneath.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Horseradish + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together389 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Horseradish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Horseradish + saucetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together775 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that gives the coating its bite.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the coating moist and smooth.
French vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens and balances the rich coating.
Egg yolks
Enriches and thickens the coating, helping it hold together when warmed.
Egg white
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs stick to the cutlets.
Fine bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, dry layer on the outside of the cutlets.

The step that matters

Warm the cutlets in the oven without browning. Gentle, moderate heat warms the meat and coating through while keeping the crumbs from scorching. Too much heat would darken the surface and dry the meat.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, vinegar, pepper, nutmeg, sugar, sauce, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, pepper, nutmeg, sugar, sauce, egg. 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.

More mutton cutlets recipes

Braised 15Portuguese 12Broiled 10Breaded 9Cold 6with Green Peas 6 See all 120 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes