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Mutton Collops

Thin slices of mutton cooked with pepper, salt, mace, parsley, shallots, butter, stock, lemon juice, flour, and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Mutton Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut very thin slices from a leg of mutton, removing all sinews and fat.

  2. Season the meat with pepper, coarse sea salt, and mace, then sprinkle with parsley and shallots.

Cook

  1. Heat a lump of butter in a stewpan, then add the collops.

  2. Stir with a wooden spoon until three-quarters cooked.

  3. Add ½ pint of stock and a little lemon juice, then thicken with flour and butter.

  4. Let simmer for 4-5 minutes until done.

Serve

  1. Serve in a dish with the sauce and top with fried bread pieces.

  2. Garnish with pickles.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton
Is the main meat, cut into thin slices that cook quickly and tenderly.
Flour
Thickens the stock and butter into a smooth, lightly bound sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while the collops are browned and the sauce is finished.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the savoury stock and sauce.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion flavour that softens as the meat cooks.

The step that matters

Stirring until three-quarters cooked. Thin slices of meat overcook and toughen quickly, so they should be removed from heat or left to finish in the sauce while still slightly pink inside.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, parsley, shallot, butter, lemon, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, parsley, shallot, butter, lemon, 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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