Name: Mutton or Lamb Chops
Ingredients: Mutton or lamb chops; Butter; Pepper; Coarse sea salt

Why it works: Mutton and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,442 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mutton or Lamb Chops

Ingredients

Mutton or lamb chops
Butter
Pepper
Coarse sea salt

Directions

Prepare and cook

Trim the chops nicely.
Broil over a clear fire until cooked.

Season and serve

Season with butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt.
Serve the chops slightly overlapping in an oval shape with the bones standing obliquely.
For presentation, add a frill of white paper around the ends of the bones.

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.

Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,442 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,781 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton or lamb chops: Main protein; cooked over direct heat so the outside browns while the meat cooks through.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture to the finished chops.

“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.