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Haeioot of Breast of Mutton with Turnips

A French stew of breast of mutton and turnips, braised in a broth-based sauce with carrots, onions and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Haeioot of Breast of Mutton with Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton and sauce

  1. Fry the mutton pieces in butter until browned, then drain in a colander.

  2. Add flour to the remaining butter, brown slightly, then moisten with broth.

  3. Boil the mixture, skim off fat, and strain into a clean saucepan.

Braise the stew

  1. Add the mutton, chopped carrots, onions (one studded with cloves), parsley, bay leaf, thyme, garlic, salt, and pepper.

  2. Boil until the meat is cooked and the sauce is reduced.

Prepare the turnips and serve

  1. Fry the turnips in butter until they begin to brown, then sprinkle with powdered sugar.

  2. Once the turnips are golden, add them to the stew an hour before serving.

  3. Remove the carrots, onions, and parsley before serving, then dress the meat and garnish with turnips.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Breast of mutton
Provides the meat that becomes tender and rich as it simmers in the sauce.
Butter
Browns the mutton and turnips and carries flavour through the dish.
Flour
Browned in butter, it thickens the broth into a smooth sauce.
Broth
Forms the liquid base that the sauce reduces from.
Turnips
Soften in the stew while browning and sugaring give them a golden, sweet edge.

The step that matters

Skim the sauce before straining. Fat that is not skimmed off after boiling would leave the sauce greasy and heavy, so it must be removed before the mixture goes into the clean saucepan.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, flour, carrot, clove, parsley, thyme):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, flour, carrot, clove, parsley, thyme. 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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