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Larded Mutton Chops

A slow‑cooked mutton chop dish larded with fat salt pork and served with a lemon‑mushroom sherry gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Larded Mutton Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chops

  1. Trim excess fat and skin from the mutton chops.

  2. Flatten the chops with the broad side of a hatchet.

  3. Lard each chop with 4 strips of fat salt pork, pushing them through so they project on both sides.

  4. Place the chops in a saucepan and sprinkle with minced onion, pepper, and parsley.

  5. Barely cover the chops with weak broth or leftover chicken gravy.

Braise

  1. Cover the saucepan and cook on low heat for 1 hour without boiling.

  2. Increase the heat and simmer for 30 minutes, or until tender.

  3. Remove the chops and keep them warm.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy with browned flour, then add lemon juice, mushroom catsup, and sherry.

  2. Boil the gravy for 1 minute, then return the chops to the saucepan.

  3. Cover and heat until just boiling.

  4. Arrange the chops on a dish and pour the gravy over them.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pork + chickentop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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 long, gentle simmering.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour that moistens the lean mutton as it cooks.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the chops rather than running off.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Cook on low heat without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and can make the chops dry and stringy, while gentle simmering breaks down connective tissue slowly and keeps the meat tender.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pork, onion, pepper, parsley, chicken, flour):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pork, onion, pepper, parsley, chicken, 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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