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Durham Cutlets

A savory cutlet made with minced meat, bread crumbs, curry, and piped macaroni, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Durham Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and flour together.

  2. Add the stock, curry powder, salt, pepper, and mushroom ketchup; cook for 3-4 minutes.

  3. Stir in the minced meat and 3 oz. of bread crumbs until well mixed.

  4. Spread the mixture on a large dinner plate and let it cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Once cool, divide into 12 equal parts and shape into cutlets.

  2. Insert about 1 inch of piped macaroni into the thin end of each cutlet.

  3. Beat the egg and brush it over each cutlet, then roll them in the remaining bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat frying fat until smoking hot and fry the cutlets until light brown.

  2. Drain on soft paper and arrange in a ring on a folded serviette or lace paper.

  3. Garnish the center with a bunch of green parsley.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Butter
Enriches the flavour and, with flour, forms the roux that thickens the base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock base so the mixture holds together when shaped.
Minced meat
Forms the main body of the cutlet and gives it its savoury flavour and texture.
Bread crumbs
Bind the mixture and form the crisp, browned outer coating.
Egg
Coats the cutlets so the crumbs stick and brown during frying.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma that defines the dish.

The step that matters

Frying the cutlets in smoking-hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the crumb coating absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of sealing quickly into a crisp, golden crust, and the meat inside may heat unevenly.

“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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