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Meat and Poultry

A dish of fried cutlets served with a cucumber mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,067 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Meat and Poultry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cutlets

  1. Mix the egg yolks, flour, and lemon essence with a little stock.

  2. Fry the cutlets until light brown.

Serve

  1. Arrange the cutlets around a dish.

  2. Pour the cucumber mixture in the center.

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. Lemon + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

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

  2. Flour + cucumbertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness to the cutlets.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the mixture holds together.
Cucumbers
Add moisture and a mild, fresh flavour to the dish.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets until light brown. Frying over steady heat browns the surface through Maillard reactions, which add flavour and colour. Too little heat leaves the cutlets pale and greasy, while too much heat can scorch the outside before the inside is cooked through.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Pumpkinfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, cucumber. 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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