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Mutton Collops

A dish of sliced mutton seasoned with herbs, fried, then simmered in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mutton Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the mutton into round slices about 2½ inches in diameter.

  2. Mix the shallot, herbs, mace, pepper, and salt, and spread this mixture on one side of the meat.

  3. Let the seasoned meat sit for 1 hour.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry the meat quickly in hot butter or fat, starting with the seasoned side.

  2. Remove the meat from the pan and keep it warm.

  3. Sprinkle the flour into the pan, ensuring the pan has no more fat than the flour will absorb, and let it brown.

  4. Add the gravy or stock to the pan and season to taste.

  5. Boil gently for about 15 minutes, then add a little lemon juice or vinegar to flavor.

  6. Pour the sauce around the meat.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Provides the main body of the dish; frying briefly browns its surface for flavor.
Flour
Browns in the fat and thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce.
Shallots or onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the seasoned surface of the meat.
Gravy or stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the flavor of the dish.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savory sauce.

The step that matters

Sprinkling the flour into the pan. Too much fat left in the pan leaves the flour greasy and pasty, so it cannot brown or thicken smoothly. Keeping only the fat the flour can absorb lets it toast and bind the sauce evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, shallot, flour, butter, lemon, 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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