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Mutton Chops in Batter

Battered mutton chops seasoned with pepper, salt, nutmeg, dipped in milk, flour, egg batter, and fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mutton Chops in Batter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut nice little slices from a tender leg or loin of mutton.

  2. Season the slices with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

Batter and fry

  1. In a bowl, mix milk, flour, and eggs to make a batter.

  2. Dip each slice of mutton into the batter.

  3. Fry the battered slices in hot dripping or lard until golden brown.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Forms the main meat, cooked through while the batter sets around it.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it coats each slice and holds together in the fat.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a firm, crisp coating when fried.
Milk
Loosens the flour and eggs into a pourable batter that spreads thinly over the meat.

The step that matters

Frying the battered slices. The fat must be hot enough to set the batter quickly and brown it. If the fat is too cool, the batter soaks up grease and turns heavy, and the meat can cook unevenly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

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