Name: Mutton Cutlets a LA Maitre d'Hotel
Ingredients: 8 oz butter; 1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley; juice of 1 lemon; 5 mutton cutlets; salt; pepper; fried parsley for garnish

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mutton Cutlets a LA Maitre d'Hotel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Trim the mutton cutlets, removing excess fat and cutting the bones short.
Beat the cutlets with a meat mallet and season both sides with salt and pepper.
Refrigerate the cutlets for 1–2 hours.
Mix together the butter, parsley, and lemon juice in a bowl.

Cook and serve

Melt some butter in a frying pan and fry the cutlets until browned on both sides.
Place the cooked cutlets on a hot dish, top with pieces of parsley butter, garnish with fried parsley, and serve hot.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,442 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton cutlets: Provide the main meat; trimming and beating tenderise and flatten them for even frying.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture, and browns in the pan to give a savoury crust.
Parsley: Adds fresh, herbal aroma and colour to the parsley butter and garnish.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the taste of the meat.

The step that matters

Frying the cutlets until browned on both sides. The pan must be hot enough to brown the surface quickly. Browning gives flavour through the Maillard reaction, while a pan that is too cool lets the cutlets steam and turn grey and tough.

“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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Mutton Cutlets a LA Maitre d'Hotel