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Fried Mutton Chops

Fried mutton chops are cooked in butter or lard, seasoned with salt, pepper, optional shallot, herbs, and garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fried Mutton Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select well-fed mutton chops, ensuring they are evenly cut.

  2. Melt 1 ounce of butter or lard in a frying pan.

Cook

  1. Using a fork, dip the chop at the bone end into the fat for ½ minute.

  2. Turn the chop onto one side, sprinkle with salt, pepper, and optional shallot or herbs.

  3. After 3 minutes, turn the chop and season the other side similarly.

  4. Cook the chop for a total of no more than 10 minutes, turning frequently.

Serve

  1. If desired, rub a piece of garlic across the hot dish or chop before serving.

  2. Serve with plain or maître d'hôtel butter.

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. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  5. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton chops
Provide the meat, which browns and firms as it cooks in the hot fat.
Butter or lard
Conducts heat and carries flavour, and its fat browns the chop surface.

The step that matters

Cooking for no more than 10 minutes, turning frequently. Chops cook quickly in a hot pan. Overcooking dries the lean meat and toughens it, while frequent turning helps the chop cook evenly and brown without burning.

Swap the shallot

The recipe marks shallot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, pepper, garlic):

  1. Onionfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Shallotthe original

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