Skip to main content
Main

Fried Mutton Chops

A dish of mutton chops coated in beaten egg and cracker crumbs, fried in lard until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mutton and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,648 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fried Mutton Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Use large mutton chops, resembling cutlets.

  2. Beat the chops with a flat surface to crush the bones.

  3. Dip each chop into the beaten egg, then coat with cracker crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat plenty of lard or drippings in a frying kettle until hot.

  2. Test the oil with a piece of bread; it should brown almost instantly.

  3. Fry the chops until golden brown.

  4. Remove with a skimmer and place on a hot platter.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Mutton + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 that is cooked through while the coating turns crisp.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder so the cracker crumbs stick to the chops.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating when fried in hot fat.
Lard or drippings
Conducts heat for frying and gives the coating a rich, browned flavor.

The step that matters

Testing the fat temperature. The fat must be hot enough that the bread browns almost instantly. If it is too cool, the crumb coating absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisp, and the chops cook unevenly.

“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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipesCurried MuttonCurried Mutton9 recipes