Name: Mutton Chops a LA Maintenon
Ingredients: 4 tablespoons chopped mushrooms; 1 tablespoon chopped onion; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 tablespoon flour; 3 tablespoons stock; 1 teaspoon salt; ⅕ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mutton Chops a LA Maintenon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

Cut each chop thick and split the larger end open.
In a pan, melt the butter and brown the flour in it.
Add the stock, mushrooms, onion, salt, and pepper; cook until combined.
Stir in Worcestershire sauce and parsley, then set aside to cool.

Stuff and cook

Stuff 1 teaspoon of the mixture into each chop and broil until cooked.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,626 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms: Add moisture and savory flavor to the stuffing.
Butter: Carries flavor and helps brown the flour for the base.
Flour: Browned in butter to thicken the stuffing.
Stock: Moistens the stuffing and dissolves into the thickened base.

The step that matters

Brown the flour in the butter. Flour needs to cook in fat until it turns golden and nutty. Undercooked flour tastes raw and pasty, while overbrowned flour turns bitter and loses thickening power.

Swap the onion

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

Shallotfits better
Chivefits better
Capsicumfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, flour, pepper, sauce, parsley. 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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Mutton Chops a LA Maintenon