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Mutton, Scotch, Collops

A stew of mutton collops cooked with onion, butter, flour, stock, and parsley, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mutton, Scotch, Collops

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove bones and fat from the mutton and chop or mince it evenly, but not too finely.

  2. Finely chop the onion and fry it in the butter.

Cook

  1. Add the meat to the pan and cook quickly for a few minutes.

  2. Sprinkle in the flour, stir, and moisten with the stock.

  3. Bring to a boil, skim, and cook gently for about 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Season to taste, add the chopped parsley, and serve garnished with croutons.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Lean meat forms the body of the dish, becoming tender with gentle simmering.
Butter
Fat that carries the onion's flavour and helps brown the meat at the start.
Onion
Frying it softly builds sweetness and savoury aroma as the base of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce that clings to the meat.
Stock
Liquid that moistens the flour and simmers the meat into a savoury gravy.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil, skim, and cook gently for about 30 minutes.. Boiling hard toughens the meat's proteins and can break the sauce, while gentle simmering keeps the mutton tender. Skimming removes scum that would cloud the gravy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, parsley, flour, pepper, 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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