Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Chop

A simple stew of a loin chop simmered in stock with butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Stewed Chop

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chop

  1. Trim the chop.

  2. Heat the butter in a frying pan until it smokes.

  3. Add the chop and brown quickly on both sides.

Stew

  1. Transfer the chop to a stew pan.

  2. Add the hot stock, cover tightly, and let simmer gently for 1 hour.

Thicken and serve

  1. Place the chop on a hot plate.

  2. Mix the flour with a little cold water and add it to the stock.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then pour over the chop.

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 + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 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

Loin chop
Provides the meat that is browned and then becomes tender through slow simmering.
Butter
Conducts heat for browning the chop and adds richness to the pan.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Stock
Forms the cooking liquid that keeps the chop moist and becomes the sauce.

The step that matters

Brown the chop quickly. Searing the chop in very hot fat creates browned flavour on the surface before stewing. If the pan is not hot enough, the chop steams and turns grey, losing that flavour.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes