Name: Cold Meat Cutlets
Ingredients: ½ pound cold meat or chicken; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 ounce flour; ½ cup white stock; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; ¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg; 1 teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; grated rind of ½ small lemon

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cold Meat Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

If using chicken, pass it twice through a meat grinder.
Melt the butter in a pan, then stir in the flour until smooth.
Add the stock gradually, stirring constantly until it boils; cook for 2 minutes.
Add the chicken, salt, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, and lemon rind; mix well and let cool.
For beef, add 1 teaspoon anchovy essence; for mutton, add 1 teaspoon mushroom catsup.

Shape and fry

Once cooled, dust a board with flour and shape the mixture into rolls with square edges.
Beat an egg in a bowl, then coat each roll in the egg and then in breadcrumbs mixed with pepper and salt.
Heat enough fat in a pan until it produces white smoke, then fry the rolls for 3 minutes.
Drain on paper and serve with brown sauce and mashed peas or potatoes.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,062 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat or chicken: Forms the main body of the cutlet and gives it its savoury flavour.
Butter: Enriches the base and carries flavour into the white sauce.
Flour: Thickens the stock into a binding paste that holds the mixture together.
White stock: Moistens the mixture and turns the flour paste into a smooth, cohesive binder.

The step that matters

Cooking the stock and flour base. Stir constantly while adding the stock so the flour cooks smoothly without lumps. The starch must boil to thicken fully; a thin or lumpy base makes the mixture too soft to shape once cooled.

“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.

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

Meat Croquettes52 recipes

Meatballs37 recipes

Mince Meat37 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Cold Meat Cutlets