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Mutton Chops, with Bread Crumbs

Mutton chops coated in butter and bread crumbs, grilled until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 the chops

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

  2. Dip the chops into the melted butter.

  3. Coat the chops with bread crumbs.

Broil and serve

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

  2. Broil for 10 minutes, turning once.

  3. Serve with slices of lemon on the side.

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 main meat; trimming and flattening gives them even thickness for even cooking.
Butter
Carries the bread crumbs and adds richness and moisture to the surface of the chops.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp coating that browns during broiling and helps hold in moisture.

The step that matters

Broil for 10 minutes, turning once. Turning only once keeps the buttered crumb coating from being disturbed and burning. Low heat lets the chops cook through before the crumbs over-brown.

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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