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Stuffed Mutton Chops

A savory dish of mutton chops filled with a butter‑flour stock and almond or mushroom mixture, served over green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stuffed Mutton Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Make a white roux by melting the butter and stirring in the flour until thickened.

  2. Gradually add the stock, mixing thoroughly until it bubbles.

  3. Stir in the chopped almonds or mushrooms and season with salt.

  4. Boil once, then let the mixture cool and stiffen.

Stuff and cook the chops

  1. Prepare the mutton chops by splitting them horizontally to the bone, leaving the bone intact.

  2. Fill the slit with the cold paste, close the sides, and secure with a wooden toothpick.

  3. Broil the chops slowly over clear coals, turning often for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove the toothpicks and serve on a bed of green peas.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

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

  5. Almond + peastop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Butter
Melted with flour to form the roux that thickens the filling.
Flour
Combines with melted butter to make a roux that thickens the stock into a paste.
Stock
Liquid that, once thickened, forms the moist body of the filling.
Almonds or mushrooms
Add texture and body to the filling paste.

The step that matters

Let the filling cool and stiffen before stuffing. A hot or loose paste will not hold its shape in the slit and may run out during broiling. Cooling lets the starch-thickened mixture set firm enough to stay inside the chop.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, almond. 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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