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Mutton or Lamb

A stew of mutton or lamb chops browned with bacon, oatmeal, and flour, simmered with onions, carrots, and turnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton or Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim excess fat and the lower end of the chine bone from the chops.

Brown and layer

  1. Heat an iron frying pan over high heat and fry the chops for 2 minutes to brown them.

  2. Transfer the chops to a clean stewpan and layer with bacon slices.

Make the gravy

  1. In the frying pan, mix oatmeal and flour into the gravy, then add boiling water.

  2. Boil for 2 minutes, then pour the mixture over the chops in the stewpan.

Stew and serve

  1. Add onion, carrot, turnips, salt, and pepper to the stewpan.

  2. Cover and simmer gently on low heat for 1½ to 2 hours until the chops are tender.

  3. Check for doneness by testing one chop; avoid overcooking.

  4. Arrange the chops on a serving dish, leaving space in the middle for the vegetables.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton or lamb neck chops
Provides the meat that becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Bacon slices
Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the chops and gravy as they stew.
Oatmeal
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the flour and liquid.
Flour
Thickens the gravy, giving it body and a smooth texture.
Turnips
Add sweetness and body to the stew as they soften during cooking.

The step that matters

Simmering gently until the chops are tender. Tough cuts like neck need long, low, gentle heat so collagen breaks down into gelatin. A hard boil toughens the meat and can make the liquid cloudy, so keep it at a bare simmer and check doneness rather than overcooking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, flour, carrot, turnip, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, carrot, turnip, pepper. 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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