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Fried Mutton Chops

Fried mutton chops 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.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Fry and make the gravy

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

  2. Brown a little butter and flour in a pan.

  3. Add a little water to the browned mixture and stir to make gravy.

Serve

  1. Pour the gravy over the fried mutton chops.

  2. Serve 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
The main protein, cooked by frying until browned on the outside.
Pork fat or mutton fat
Fries the chops, adding browning and rich flavour to the meat.
Butter
Browns with the flour to give the gravy a nutty, toasted flavour and colour.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when cooked in the fat and then mixed with water.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour. Cooking the flour in fat until it turns golden removes raw starch taste and builds colour. If it is stirred in too pale or burned, the gravy tastes floury or bitter.

“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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