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Stewed Chop

A mutton chop stewed with rice, celery, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,169 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Chop

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the chop with a damp cloth.

  2. Trim off most of the fat.

  3. Place the chop in a jar or basin.

  4. Add the salt, washed rice, and cold water.

  5. Wash and trim the celery. Cut the celery into fine shreds.

  6. Add the shredded celery to the jar.

Steam

  1. Cover the jar with a lid or a piece of greased paper.

  2. Place the jar in a saucepan with boiling water halfway up the sides.

  3. Cover the pan. Steam slowly for 1 to 2 hours.

  4. Add more water if necessary.

Serve

  1. Transfer the chop to a hot plate.

  2. Pour the rice and liquid around it.

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. Rice + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Mutton + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Mutton + celerytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together928 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton chop
Provides the meat that becomes tender and flavourful as it steams slowly in its own juices.
Whole rice
Thickens the cooking liquid slightly and adds starch to the broth as it softens.
Celery
Adds a mild aromatic flavour to the broth as it steams.
Cold water
Forms the cooking liquid that gently extracts flavour from the meat and vegetables.

The step that matters

Steam slowly with water halfway up the pan. Gentle, indirect steaming keeps the meat tender and the liquid clear. A hard boil would toughen the meat and cloud the broth, and running low on water would scorch the jar or let the chop dry out, so check and top up as directed.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cuminfits about as well
  3. Pepperfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, rice. 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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