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Chops with Gravy

A dish of chops simmered in a savory gravy made with butter, flour, vegetables, stock, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chops with Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chops and vegetables

  1. Melt butter in a frying pan.

  2. Fry the chops for 1 minute until lightly browned on each side. Remove the chops.

  3. Fry the vegetables in the same fat for a few minutes.

Simmer

  1. Dredge flour over the chops. Place them in a stewpan.

  2. Layer the fried vegetables on top.

  3. Pour in enough warm water or stock to cover. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat.

  4. Simmer for about 1.5 hours until the chops are tender.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Pour off most of the liquid. Cool it in a basin surrounded by cold water. Remove the fat.

  2. Season the gravy with pepper and salt. Add ketchup and sugar browning.

  3. Heat the gravy until very hot.

  4. Arrange the chops on a dish. Pour the gravy over. Serve.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Pork chops
Main protein that becomes tender during the long, gentle simmer.
Flour
Dusted over the chops and thickens the cooking liquid into gravy.
Butter
Fat for browning the chops and vegetables, adding richness and flavour.
Mixed vegetables
Fried first, then simmered, adding flavour and body to the gravy.
Walnut or mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury depth and umami to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after bringing to a boil. A rolling boil toughens meat and can break up the gravy, so reducing the heat to a gentle simmer lets the chops become tender while the liquid stays smooth.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, sugar. 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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