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Mutton Cutlets, with Tomato Sauce

Mutton cutlets served with a tomato sauce thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Mutton Cutlets, with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Trim fat, pith, and gristle from the cutlets, leaving about 1.5 inches of bone exposed.

  2. Dip each cutlet in oiled butter, then coat both sides of each cutlet with bread crumbs.

Fry the cutlets

  1. Fry the cutlets slowly in lard until pale brown, about 20 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the tomato sauce.

  2. Mix baked flour with fresh butter, then stir the mixture into the sauce and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Add vinegar to the sauce.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce into the center of a dish.

  2. Arrange the cutlets around the sauce.

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

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

  2. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

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

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Mutton cutlets
The main protein, which is cooked through while the outside browns.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden-brown coating on the outside of the cutlets.
Baked flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, giving it body.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavor to the sauce.
Tomato sauce
Forms the base of the sauce, providing sweetness and acidity.

The step that matters

Frying the cutlets slowly. Frying slowly lets the heat reach the centre of the thick cutlet before the crumb coating darkens too much. Fast, hot frying can scorch the outside while the meat stays underdone.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, bread, sauce, flour, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, bread, sauce, flour, vinegar. 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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