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Mutton Chops, with Bread Crumbs

Bread crumb-coated mutton chops grilled over low heat and served with lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mutton Chops, with Bread Crumbs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chops

  1. Trim the fat from the mutton chops and flatten them with a wooden knife.

  2. Sprinkle salt and pepper over both sides of the chops.

Coat and cook

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over low heat.

  2. Dip the chops into the melted butter, then coat them with bread crumbs.

  3. Place each chop on a grill over low heat.

  4. Broil the chops for 10 minutes, turning them only once.

Serve

  1. Serve with lemon slices.

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

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 and served as the main component.
Butter
Carries the bread crumbs and adds richness and moisture while the chops cook.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp coating that browns during cooking and helps hold the butter on the surface.

The step that matters

Turning the chops only once. Flipping meat repeatedly interrupts the browning crust forming on each side and can pull the coating off, so one turn keeps the crumb coating intact and browned.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Red currantfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

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