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Brewers’ Mutton-chops

Mutton chops seasoned with salt, cayenne, and lard, broiled and finished with butter, shallot, parsley, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Brewers’ Mutton-chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the mutton slices slightly with a meat mallet.

  2. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

  3. Rub with a brush dipped in melted lard.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil on moderate heat, turning until cooked.

  2. Dish the chops and mash each with seasoned butter mixed with shallot, parsley, and lemon juice.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a tender, savoury meat.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the finished chops as it melts over them.
Melted lard
Coats the surface so the chops brown evenly under the heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and butter.

The step that matters

Broil on moderate heat, turning until cooked. Moderate heat cooks the thick slices through without scorching the outside, and turning them lets both sides brown evenly. Lard on the surface helps this browning, so the surface can burn before the centre is done if the heat is too high.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Carrotfits about as well
  2. Shallotthe original
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Spinachfits less well

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