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Mutton Cutlets and Tomatoes

Mutton cutlets simmered with tomatoes, brown gravy, carrots, onions, and optional sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,606 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mutton Cutlets and Tomatoes

serves 8 cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into cutlets, trimming them neatly and leaving a small piece of bone on each.

  2. Slice the carrot and onion thinly.

Cook and stew

  1. Fry the cutlets in a little butter until browned, but do not cook them through.

  2. Add the sliced carrot and onion to the cutlets along with pepper, salt, gravy, and sherry if desired.

  3. Stew until the cutlets are tender.

Serve

  1. Remove the cutlets and place them on a hot dish.

  2. Heat the tomatoes and pour them over the cutlets.

  3. Add a little lemon juice to the gravy before serving.

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 + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + carrottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of mutton
Provides the meat for the cutlets, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the cutlets and adds richness to their surface.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and a sharp, acidic flavour to the finished dish.
Onion
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour to the stewing liquid.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and body to the gravy as it stews.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets until browned but not cooked through. Browning creates savoury flavour on the surface, while stopping early keeps the meat from drying out, since it finishes cooking during the stew.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, tomato, carrot, onion, butter):

  1. Cherryfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, tomato, carrot, onion, butter. 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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