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Stewed Chop in Milk

A lean mutton chop stewed slowly in milk with mace, bay leaf, salt, pepper, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Chop in Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chop

  1. Trim most of the fat from the chop and beat it.

Stew

  1. Place the chop in a saucepan with the milk, mace, bay leaf, and seasonings.

  2. Stew very slowly with the lid on for one hour.

  3. Remove the chop, mace, and bay leaf from the saucepan.

Thicken the milk

  1. Blend the flour smoothly with a little milk or water.

  2. Stir the flour mixture into the milk from the saucepan.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Milk + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 chop
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow stewing in the milk.
Milk
Forms the stewing liquid that gently cooks the meat and becomes the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it is stirred in.

The step that matters

Stew very slowly with the lid on. Slow, covered cooking at a low heat keeps the milk from scorching or boiling over and lets the tough connective tissue in the mutton break down gradually, so the meat turns tender.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, milk, flour, pepper. 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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