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Mutton-Collops and Cucumbers

Thinly sliced mutton collops simmered with cucumbers, vinegar, stock, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Mutton-Collops and Cucumbers

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Pare and slice the cucumbers.

  2. Sprinkle cucumbers with fine salt and pepper, then pour vinegar over them.

Cook the mutton

  1. Brown the thinly-cut collops in a frying pan.

  2. Stew the browned collops with the drained cucumbers in a little stock.

  3. Skim and season the stew, then serve it hot in a dish.

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. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  2. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + muttontop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together615 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton collops
Provide the main protein, which browns in the pan and becomes tender when stewed.
Cucumbers
Add a fresh, crisp contrast to the rich stewed meat.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the cucumbers and balances the rich meat.

The step that matters

Browning the collops. Browning the thin pieces in the pan creates savoury, roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or skipping the browning leaves the stew pale and flat-tasting.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cabbagefits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, mutton. 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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