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Mutton Collops

Mutton collops are small pieces of roast mutton cooked with herbs, shallots, butter, gravy, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into small pieces.

  2. Sprinkle the minced herbs, shallots, pepper, and salt over the mutton.

Cook

  1. Fry the mutton in the butter until browned.

  2. Add the gravy and thicken it with the flour.

  3. Once it boils, add the mutton and lemon juice, and heat thoroughly.

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. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 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

Tinned roast mutton
Provides the main meat, which is cut small and heated through in the sauce.
Butter
Fat that browns the mutton, adding richness and savoury flavour.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth, coating sauce.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and meaty flavour.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion-like aroma as they cook with the meat.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with flour. Flour must be cooked into the hot gravy, or it can form lumps and leave a raw, pasty taste. Letting the sauce boil briefly lets the starch swell and thicken evenly before the mutton is added.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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