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Mutton Chops

Mutton chops seasoned with salt, pepper, and flour, broiled and served with butter and tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mutton Chops

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sprinkle the chops with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and flour.

  2. Place them in a double boiler.

  3. Broil over or before the fire for eight minutes.

  4. Serve on a hot dish with butter, salt, and pepper for tomato sauce.

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 + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

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
The main meat, which browns and firms as it cooks over direct heat.
Flour
Forms a light coating on the surface that helps the chops brown.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the finished chops.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and moisture alongside the rich, savoury meat.

The step that matters

Broiling over or before the fire. Heat that is too high can scorch the flour coating before the inside is cooked, while heat that is too low leaves the chops pale and underdone. Watching the distance from the fire and the eight-minute timing helps the outside brown evenly while the centre cooks through.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, flour, butter, sauce. 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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