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Fried Mutton Chops

Fried mutton chops seasoned with pepper and coarse sea salt, pan‑fried in fat and served with a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,239 recipes. Both carry 1-nonanal, which smells fatty, waxy. The science ↓

Fried Mutton Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chops

  1. Trim the mutton chops and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Fry and make the gravy

  1. Fry the chops in their own fat or pork fat, turning them often.

  2. In a separate pan, brown a little butter and flour.

  3. Add a little water to the browned mixture and pour the gravy over the chops.

Serve

  1. Serve the chops hot.

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. Mutton + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,239 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

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

  5. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

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 chops
Main protein; frying them in their own fat gives browned, savoury flavour.
Pork fat or mutton fat
Fat for frying that browns the chops and carries flavour into the pan.
Butter
Fat that cooks with flour to form the base of the gravy and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when browned in butter and then mixed with water.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour. Cooking the flour in butter until golden toasts it and builds flavour, while stirring prevents lumps and scorching. Adding water too early leaves a raw, pasty taste.

“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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