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Collops of Mutton

Thin slices of mutton cooked in a spiced gravy with butter and flour, served with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Collops of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut thin collops from the leg of mutton, removing all fat and sinews.

  2. Season the collops with salt, pepper, mace, parsley, thyme, and shallots.

Cook

  1. Heat a good amount of butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the collops to the butter.

  3. Stir with a wooden spoon until three-quarters cooked.

  4. Add 1/2 pint of gravy and a little lemon juice.

  5. Thicken the mixture with flour and butter.

  6. Simmer for 4-5 minutes until done.

Serve

  1. Serve the collops in a dish with gravy.

  2. Sprinkle diced bread on top.

  3. Garnish with pickles.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Walnut + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the meat that is cut into thin collops and cooked through in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the collops brown lightly in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth, cohesive sauce when cooked with butter.
Walnut ketchup
Adds a deep, savoury flavour to the sauce.
Gravy
Supplies the liquid base of the sauce, carrying flavour and moisture to the meat.

The step that matters

Simmer until done. Thin collops cook quickly, so overcooking toughens the meat and dries it out. Stop once it is just cooked through, since it keeps cooking in the hot sauce.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, ketchup, sauce, pepper, shallot, flour, butter):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Almondfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, ketchup, sauce, pepper, shallot, flour, butter. 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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