Skip to main content
Main

Braised Mutton Chops

Braised mutton chops simmered in drippings and water with onion, celery or carrot, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Braised Mutton Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the drippings in a frying pan.

  2. Fry the onion, celery, or carrot until softened.

  3. Brown the mutton chops quickly on each side.

Braise

  1. Place the onions on a rack and lay the chops on top.

  2. Pour the fat from the pan over the chops.

  3. Add boiling water and bring to a boil for 5 minutes.

  4. Place in a Caloric cooker and cook for 1.5 hours or more using one radiator.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot platter and garnish with parsley.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + muttontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Celery + muttontop 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 chops
Browned on the outside, then braised until tender in the steam and liquid.
Drippings
Fat for frying the vegetables and browning the chops, adding rich flavor.
Onion
Softened in the fat first, adding aromatic flavor to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Brown the mutton chops quickly on each side. Searing creates browned surfaces through the Maillard reaction, which builds savory flavor. Browning too slowly or too long can dry or toughen the meat before the braise begins.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, mutton, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipes