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Mutton Collops

Mutton collops are sliced mutton fried and stewed in thick brown sauce, served with mashed turnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut rounds of mutton about the size of a 5‑shilling piece.

Cook

  1. Fry the mutton rounds and onion slices in hot dripping until browned on both sides.

  2. Stew the browned mutton in thick brown sauce for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve the collops surrounded by a border of mashed turnips.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

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

  3. Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Mutton + turniptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,558 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Sauce + turniptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Onion and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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 slices
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long stewing in the sauce.
Onion slices
Soften and sweeten as they fry, adding savoury depth to the sauce.
Thick brown sauce
Supplies the moisture and rich flavour that the mutton absorbs during stewing.
Mashed turnips
Form a soft, mild border that contrasts with the rich, saucy meat.

The step that matters

Browning the mutton rounds in hot dripping. Frying in hot fat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, creating deep savoury flavour that carries into the stewed sauce. Pale, under-browned rounds will taste flat.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Turnipthe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, 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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