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Cutlets, with Ham and Carrots

Cutlets with ham and carrots served with a carrot purée and fresh watercress garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cutlets, with Ham and Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Broil or fry the ham until cooked.

  2. Cut the cooked ham into narrow strips.

Cook the cutlets

  1. In a sauté pan, cook the cutlets in warm butter until they are pale brown.

Plate and serve

  1. Mix the purée of carrots with the chopped parsley and place it on a dish.

  2. Arrange the cutlets around the purée and add the strips of ham on top and around the dish.

  3. Garnish with a sprig of fresh watercress.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + watercresstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + watercresstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together108 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Provides the savoury meat that is cooked and cut into strips for topping the dish.
Cutlets
Cooked in warm butter until pale brown, giving the main dish its browned surface and flavour.
Purée of carrots
Forms the soft base the cutlets and ham are arranged around, adding moisture and sweetness.
Butter
Cooks the cutlets in warm fat, helping them brown gently and adding richness.

The step that matters

Cooking the cutlets in warm butter until pale brown. Cooking over heat that is too high can scorch the milk solids in butter and brown the outside before the inside is done. Keeping the butter warm and the colour pale helps the cutlets cook through evenly.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, parsley, butter, watercress. 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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