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Mutton-chops

Mutton chops served with sautéed spinach and boiled eggs, seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and spinach are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,400 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Mutton-chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chops

  1. Remove the bone from each mutton chop and reshape them.

  2. Season the chops with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Dip the chops in beaten eggs.

  4. Coat the chops with bread crumbs.

  5. Fry the chops in hot lard until golden brown.

Make the spinach

  1. Boil the spinach in water for 10 minutes.

  2. Transfer the spinach to cold water.

  3. Squeeze the spinach dry and chop finely.

  4. Mix the chopped spinach with flour, butter, gravy, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  5. Cook the mixture in a covered stewpan for 10 minutes.

  6. Uncover the stewpan and cook for an additional 5 minutes.

Plate and serve

  1. Boil the eggs.

  2. Cut the boiled eggs into quarters.

  3. Place the spinach in the center of a dish and arrange the chops around it.

  4. Place the egg quarters around the dish.

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. Pepper + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Spinach + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton chops
Provide the main meat, which browns and becomes tender when fried.
Beaten eggs
Act as a binder so the bread crumbs adhere to the chops.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned coating around the chops when fried.
Spinach
Forms the moist, savory base of the dish, softened by boiling and stewing.
Flour
Thickens the spinach mixture with the butter and gravy into a cohesive filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that smooths the spinach mixture and carries flavor.

The step that matters

Frying the coated chops in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the bread crumb coating absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping. Hot fat sets the crust quickly and browns it evenly.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, egg, bread, flour, butter, sugar):

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, egg, bread, flour, butter, sugar. 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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