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Braised Mutton Chops

Braised mutton chops cooked slowly with onion, carrot, celery, turnip, tomato, and stock, finished with a browned gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Braised Mutton Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chops

  1. Heat the dripping in a frying pan.

  2. Fry the sliced onion until soft.

  3. Add the mutton chops and brown the chops slightly.

Braise

  1. Place the chopped carrots, onion, celery, turnip, and tomato in a covered roaster.

  2. Lay the chops on top and pour the fat from the pan over the chops.

  3. Add the hot water or weak stock and cover the roaster tightly.

  4. Cook slowly for 1 hour, turning the chops.

  5. Season the chops with pepper and salt and dust the chops with flour.

  6. Let the chops brown uncovered for 15 minutes, turning once.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer the chops to a hot dish.

  2. Rub the gravy and vegetables through a colander and boil the gravy sharply.

  3. Pour the gravy over the meat.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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 meat that becomes tender during slow, moist cooking.
Onion
Softens and adds sweetness and savory depth to the base and gravy.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the gravy when rubbed through.
Turnip
Adds earthy flavor and thickens the gravy when rubbed through.
Tomato
Adds acidity and moisture that balances the rich fat and meat.
Flour
Dusted on the chops, it helps the surface brown and lightly thickens the gravy.

The step that matters

Cook slowly with the lid on. Slow, covered cooking in liquid breaks down the tough connective tissue in mutton so it turns tender rather than dry. Boiling or rushing the heat would toughen the meat.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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