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Mutton Chops En Casserole

A casserole of mutton chops with onions, turnips, celery, potatoes, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Chops En Casserole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and sauté the onion slices.

  2. Add the mutton chops and brown them slightly.

  3. In a casserole, layer the turnips, celery, and onion.

  4. Place the browned chops on top of the vegetables and pour in the stock or hot water.

Cook and finish

  1. Cover and cook for about 1.5 hours.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then add the parboiled potato slices.

  3. Add more stock if necessary, cover, and cook until tender.

  4. Remove the cover and brown the chops and potatoes.

  5. Serve from the casserole.

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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton chops
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow covered cooking in liquid.
Potatoes
Absorb cooking juices and soften, then brown on the surface when uncovered.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the onion and chops and carries flavour.
Stock or hot water
Provides moisture so the casserole cooks gently without drying out.
Turnips
Contribute body and mild sweetness to the liquid as they cook down.

The step that matters

Browning the chops before covering. Browning creates savoury, roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. Searing the surface first adds depth that slow braising alone cannot give.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, mutton, celery, pepper, potato):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, mutton, celery, pepper, potato. 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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