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Mutton Chops En Casserole

A casserole of mutton chops with turnips, celery, onion, potatoes, and cinnamon noodles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Chops En Casserole

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Sauté the onion slices.

  3. Add the mutton chops and brown them slightly.

Braise the casserole

  1. In a casserole, layer the turnips, celery, and onion.

  2. Place the chops on top and pour in the stock or hot water.

  3. Cover and cook for 1.5 hours.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, then add the parboiled potato slices.

  5. Add more stock if necessary, cover, and cook until tender.

  6. Remove the cover and brown the chops and potatoes.

Make and bake the noodles

  1. Mix the egg with flour and a pinch of salt until stiff.

  2. Roll the dough thin and let it dry for 30 minutes.

  3. Cut into half‑inch strips and boil for 15 minutes.

  4. Drain, place in an earthen dish, sprinkle with cinnamon, and bake for 30 minutes.

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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

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 becomes tender through slow, covered cooking.
Potatoes
Absorb cooking juices and add starchy body, then brown on the surface when uncovered.
Egg
Binds the flour into a stiff dough that holds its shape when rolled and cut.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the onion slices and chops at the start.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and aromatic flavour as they cook in the base of the casserole.

The step that matters

Cover and cook until tender, adding stock as needed. Slow, moist heat breaks down the connective tissue in shoulder meat, so it needs enough liquid to avoid drying out and to stay tender for the full time.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, mutton, celery, pepper, potato, egg):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, mutton, celery, pepper, potato, egg. 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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