Skip to main content
Main

English Mutton Chops En Casserole

A casserole of browned mutton chops with potatoes, carrots, turnips, onions, and brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

English Mutton Chops En Casserole

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Brown the chops

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Heat a frying pan until smoking hot, then sear and brown 2 or 3 mutton chops at a time.

  3. Pour off any excess fat from the pan.

  4. Arrange the browned chops in a casserole dish.

Braise in the casserole

  1. Add the parboiled potato balls, diced carrots, diced turnips, and bouquet of herbs.

  2. Pour the rich brown sauce over the ingredients in the casserole.

  3. Cover the casserole and cook for 2 hours in the oven.

Glaze the onions and finish

  1. Peel the button onions and cover them with boiling water for 5 minutes, then drain.

  2. Arrange the onions in a deep skillet, fitting them closely together.

  3. Sprinkle the onions with salt, white pepper, and granulated sugar.

  4. Add the butter to one side of the skillet and cook the onions slowly, shaking gently to turn them until browned and tender, about 30 minutes.

  5. Fifteen minutes before serving, add the cooked onions to the casserole and finish cooking without uncovering.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton chops
Searing builds browned flavour, and long covered cooking makes the meat tender and juicy.
Rich brown sauce
Provides the liquid and savoury depth that slowly flavours the meat and vegetables.
Button onions
Caramelise with butter and sugar, adding sweetness and a browned, tender texture.
Granulated sugar
Helps the onions brown through caramelisation, adding sweetness that balances the savoury sauce.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes even browning of the onions and a rounded richness.
Carrots
Hold their shape during long braising while adding sweetness and body to the dish.

The step that matters

Searing the mutton chops. Cooking the chops in a very hot pan in small batches browns their surface through the Maillard reaction, creating flavour. Crowding the pan drops its temperature, so the meat steams and turns grey instead of browning.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, potato, carrot, turnip, sauce, tomato, onion):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, potato, carrot, turnip, sauce, tomato, onion. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes