Skip to main content
Main

Cutlets with Vegetable Purée

A dish of pan‑fried cutlets served around a creamy vegetable purée.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cutlets with Vegetable Purée

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Trim the cutlets, removing gristle and fat, leaving the long bone bare for 2 inches.

  2. Melt butter in a stewpan.

  3. Add sliced turnips, onions, and celery to the butter.

  4. Lay the trimmed cutlets on top of the vegetables.

  5. Sprinkle the cutlets with pepper and salt.

  6. Cover the cutlets with more vegetables.

  7. Stew on low heat for about 30 minutes or until tender.

  8. Flatten the cooked cutlets with a wooden spoon.

  9. Dip the flattened cutlets in egg yolk.

  10. Coat the cutlets with bread crumbs.

  11. Fry the cutlets in a little butter until lightly browned on both sides.

Make the purée

  1. Rub boiled potatoes with some of the stewed vegetables through a sieve to make the purée.

  2. Combine the purée with milk or cream.

  3. Season the purée with pepper and salt.

  4. Cook the purée until stiff.

Serve

  1. Serve the purée in the center of a dish.

  2. Arrange the cutlets around the purée.

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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cutlets
Provide the main protein, which firms and browns when cooked.
Boiled potatoes
Their starch thickens the purée, giving it a smooth, stiff body.
Egg yolk
Acts as a binder that helps bread crumbs stick to the cutlets.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden-brown coating when fried in butter.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the purée's texture.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and helps the cutlets brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Cook the purée until stiff. Potato purée loosens as milk or cream is added, so it must be cooked further to evaporate excess moisture and reach a firm, spoonable consistency.

Swap the hazelnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, turnip, onion, celery, pepper, egg, bread):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Hazelnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, turnip, onion, celery, pepper, egg, 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes