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To Broil Mutton Chops

A method of broiling mutton chops seasoned with salt and pepper, served with butter, mushroom ketchup or chili vinegar, and sliced lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

To Broil Mutton Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and broil

  1. Cut mutton chops from the fillet of the leg, loin, or neck, ensuring they are at least ½ inch thick.

  2. Brush the chops lightly with clarified butter.

  3. Broil the chops over a clear fire, turning them four times.

  4. When half done, season with a mixture of salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve each chop on a hot dish with a thin slice of butter and a drizzle of mushroom ketchup or chili vinegar, garnished with sliced lemon.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  4. Mutton + mushroomtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together685 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Lemon + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 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 itself; a chop at least ½ inch thick stays juicy while broiling.
Clarified butter
Coats the chops so they brown evenly and do not stick under the flame.
Salt
Seasons the meat and draws out flavor when added partway through cooking.

The step that matters

Season when half done. Adding salt and pepper only after the chops are partly cooked keeps the seasoning on the surface rather than drawing moisture out early, helping the chops stay juicy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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