Why it works: Mutton and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,781 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Collops Fried in Butter
Ingredients
Directions
Cut the leg of mutton into thin slices (collops).
Heat a frying pan over medium heat and add butter.
Fry the collops in the butter until cooked through.
Serve hot.
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.
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Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,781 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Mutton
- Provides the meat that forms the main body of the dish once sliced and cooked.
- Butter
- Conducts heat into the slices and adds richness and browning as it fries the meat.
The step that matters
Fry the collops until cooked through. Thin slices cook quickly, so they can dry out or toughen if overcooked. Frying over moderate heat until the meat is fully cooked, without burning the butter, keeps the slices tender and evenly done.
“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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