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French Mutton Steaks

Mutton steaks simmered with sweet herbs, onions, and a gravy thickened with browned butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

French Mutton Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Place the mutton steaks in a saucepan and cover with water.

  2. Add sweet herbs, onions, and pepper; boil for 2 minutes.

  3. Remove the steaks and stew the trimmings with the herbs until the gravy is strong.

  4. Strain the gravy and remove the fat.

Cook the steaks

  1. Rub the steaks with the beaten egg yolk.

  2. Sprinkle with bread crumbs mixed with chopped herbs and fry until golden brown.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy with browned butter and flour, add vinegar, and heat until hot.

  2. Pour the gravy over the steaks in a serving dish.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

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

Neck of mutton
Provides the meat for the steaks and, with trimmings, the base of the gravy.
Egg yolk
Acts as a binder so the bread crumb coating sticks to the steaks.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried in butter.
Browned butter
Adds a nutty aroma and richness to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the steaks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Straining and degreasing the gravy. Skimming off the fat and straining out solids leaves a clear, lean gravy. Leftover fat would make the sauce greasy and cloud its flavour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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