Skip to main content
Main

Nut Cutlets

Hazelnut cutlets made with hazelnuts, vermicelli, Worcestershire sauce, tomato sauce, egg, and bread crumbs, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,013 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Nut Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Pass the hazelnuts and vermicelli through a nut mill.

  2. Mix with Worcestershire and tomato sauces to form a stiff consistency.

  3. Roll out the mixture to about ½ inch thick.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape into cutlets, dip in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in boiling oil until golden brown.

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. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  3. Sauce + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Hazelnut + tomatotop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together33 recipes

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

  5. Sauce + breadtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Shelled hazelnuts
Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the cutlets.
Vermicelli
Adds starch and bulk that helps the mixture hold its shape.
Egg
Binds the coating so the bread crumbs stick to the cutlets.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling oil until golden brown. The oil must be hot enough to brown the crumb coating quickly. If the oil is too cool, the cutlets absorb excess oil and turn greasy before the coating sets and browns.

Swap the hazelnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, egg, tomato, bread):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Peasfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Hazelnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, egg, tomato, bread. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes