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Mutton Chops Maintenon

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mutton Chops Maintenon

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the neck of mutton into chops and flatten them with a rolling pin.

  2. Bruise the yolk of a hard-boiled egg and mix it with chopped sweet herbs, grated bread, nutmeg, coarse sea salt, and pepper.

  3. Cover the chops with the mixture and wrap each in a piece of well-buttered paper.

  4. Broil the wrapped chops over a clear fire, turning them often.

  5. Serve them in the paper or with a browned gravy.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, egg, bread, pepper, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Sagefits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, egg, bread, pepper, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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