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A slow‑cooked mutton cutlet simmered in water with optional gravy, catsup, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,442 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the cutlet.

  2. Sprinkle both sides with pepper and flour thickly.

  3. Lay the cutlet flat in a well-tinned iron saucepan or stewpan.

Stew

  1. Rinse the pan with cold water, leaving 3–4 tablespoons of water in it.

  2. Place the pan over a gentle fire.

  3. Add salt when the water begins to boil.

  4. Simmer for 1.5 to 1.75 hours until the meat is tender.

  5. Turn the cutlet when it is more than half done.

  6. Add gravy, catsup, and a slight seasoning of spice for added flavor.

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. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mutton + flourtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton cutlet
Provides the meat that becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Coats the cutlet and helps thicken the cooking liquid into a light gravy.
Black pepper
Adds sharp aromatic heat that seasons the coated surface of the meat.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until tender. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue in the mutton break down slowly, while a hard boil would toughen the muscle fibres and dry the meat.

“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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