Skip to main content
Main

Mutton Cutlets, with Onions

A dish of mutton cutlets cooked with onions, ham, butter, cheese, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mutton Cutlets, with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and season

  1. Cook the mutton cutlets in the usual way.

  2. Add the minced onion when the beans are half done.

  3. When the beans are tender, add the chopped ham, butter, grated cheese, and seasoning, then shake the pan for a minute.

  4. Transfer the pan to a hot dish.

  5. Arrange the cutlets around the beans.

Coat and brown

  1. If desired, egg the cutlets.

  2. Crumb the cutlets.

  3. Fry the cutlets.

  4. Sprinkle a little cheese over the cutlets.

  5. Brown the cutlets under a salamander.

Finish the beans

  1. Sieve the beans.

  2. Reheat the beans.

  3. Add the ham.

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 + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  2. Mutton + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Ham + cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Onion + cheesetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,849 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton cutlets
Form the main substance of the dish and turn savoury and firm as they cook.
Spanish onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens and cooks down.
Chopped ham
Contributes salty, savoury flavour to the beans.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the surfaces brown evenly.
Grated cheese
Browns on the surface and adds savoury, salty flavour.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets. The coating must be fully set and the fat hot before the cutlets go in. If the fat is not hot enough, the crumbs absorb oil and turn greasy and can fall off, while the meat cooks unevenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, ham, butter, cheese):

  1. Onionthe original
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, ham, butter, cheese. 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

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipes