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Stewed Chop

A simple stew of a loin chop cooked with butter, flour, stock, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Chop

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the chop.

Brown the chop

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan until it smokes.

  2. Brown the chop quickly on both sides.

  3. Transfer the browned chop to a stew pan.

Stew

  1. Add the stock to the stew pan.

  2. Cover the stew pan tightly.

  3. Let it simmer gently for 1 hour.

  4. Place the chop on a hot plate.

  5. Mix the flour with a little cold water.

  6. Add the flour mixture to the stock.

  7. Season with salt and pepper.

  8. Pour the seasoned stock over the chop.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Browns the chop quickly and adds richness to the pan.
Flour
Mixed with cold water and stirred into the stock to thicken the liquid.
Loin chop
The main meat, which browns on the outside and becomes tender during slow simmering.
Stock
Moist cooking liquid that gently stews the chop and forms the sauce.

The step that matters

Brown the chop quickly on both sides. Hot fat sears the surface and builds browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Crowding or cooling the pan causes the meat to steam and go grey, losing that flavour before stewing.

“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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