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Mutton Chop

A simple stewed mutton chop cooked with water, celery, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mutton Chop

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim all the fat off the mutton chop.

  2. Place the chop in a stewpan with cold water.

Stew and serve

  1. Add pepper, salt, and sliced celery.

  2. Stew gently for 2 hours, skimming off any fat that rises to the surface.

  3. Remove the celery before serving.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Mutton + celerytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together928 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 long, gentle stewing.
Celery
Adds a mild aromatic flavour to the stewing liquid and is removed before serving.

The step that matters

Skimming off the fat as it rises. Fat rendered during the long stew floats to the surface and can make the broth greasy and heavy. Removing it as it rises keeps the liquid clean-tasting.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, 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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