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Mutton Steakes

Baked mutton steaks coated in a flour and egg batter with ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Mutton Steakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the loin of mutton into steaks and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Butter a dish and lay the steaks in it.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the flour and eggs together with a little milk.

  2. Add the remaining milk, beaten ginger, and salt to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture over the steaks and bake for 30 minutes.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a custard-like coating around the steaks.
Flour
Thickens the milk and egg mixture so it clings to the steaks as a batter.
Milk
Provides the liquid that turns the eggs and flour into a pourable batter.
Loin of mutton
The main meat, cooked in the oven under the batter.

The step that matters

Pouring the batter over the steaks. The batter is thin and liquid, so it should be poured gently to coat the steaks evenly. Pouring too hard can disturb the steaks and leave bare patches that cook unevenly.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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