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Cold Meat Cutlets

Cold meat cutlets made with chopped meat, onion, stock, egg, flour, butter, breadcrumbs, and fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cold Meat Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add flour and mix well.

  3. Gradually add stock, stirring until it boils.

  4. Cook the mixture well.

  5. Add the chopped meat and onion, and allow to cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the mixture into cutlets.

  2. Dip each cutlet in beaten egg.

  3. Coat each cutlet with breadcrumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the cutlets in hot oil until golden brown.

  2. Place a piece of macaroni at one end of each cutlet.

  3. Serve with a mound of potatoes and gravy.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Cold meat
Forms the bulk and savoury flavour of the cutlets.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a binding base that holds the meat together.
Stock or gravy
Supplies moisture and liquid that the flour thickens into a sauce.
Egg
Acts as a glue so breadcrumbs stick to the cutlets.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for flavour and cooking the flour base.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture well. The flour must be fully cooked with the stock until it boils and thickens; undercooked flour tastes raw and leaves the base too loose to shape and hold the cutlets together.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, egg, flour, butter, pepper. 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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