Skip to main content
Main

Grilled Chop

A seasoned mutton or lamb chop grilled and topped with a parsley, lemon, and cayenne butter sauce, served with optional fried potato matchsticks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Grilled Chop

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the chop with pepper and salt.

  2. Prepare a clear fire and brush the gridiron with butter or salad oil.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the chop for 4 minutes on each side over a hot but not fierce fire.

  2. Mix a small pat of butter with chopped parsley, lemon juice, and cayenne, and place it on the chop.

  3. If using potatoes, cut them into matchsticks, fry in boiling fat until golden brown, drain well, and serve around 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 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

Lamb chop
Provides the meat that is seared and cooked over direct heat.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the herb topping melt over the hot chop.

The step that matters

Cook over a hot but not fierce fire. A fierce fire can char the outside before the centre cooks through. A steady, hot fire browns the surface while heat reaches the interior evenly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes