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Cutlets, Mutton, Neck

Mutton neck cutlets cooked in butter with herbs and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cutlets, Mutton, Neck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Saw off the tops of the bones from the neck of mutton.

  2. Cut the meat off, leaving the bone bare to nearly an inch.

  3. Chop off the thick part of the chine bone and flatten the cutlets evenly.

  4. Remove the skin from each cutlet and scrape the bone.

Cook

  1. Melt butter in a sauté pan and add parsley, thyme, sage, bay leaf, onion, and cloves.

  2. Cook the cutlets in the prepared mixture until done, about 7-10 minutes for thin cutlets.

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. Thyme + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sage + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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, with the bone left bare as a handle.
Butter
Carries the herbs and aromatics and adds richness and browning to the cutlets.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma to the butter.
Thyme
Adds savory herbal aroma to the butter.
Sage
Adds earthy, savory aroma to the butter.

The step that matters

Cooking the cutlets in the herbed butter. Thin cutlets cook quickly, and overcooking dries out lean meat. Watching for doneness within the stated time keeps the meat tender and juicy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, parsley, thyme, sage, clove):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, parsley, thyme, sage, clove. 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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