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Haricot Mutton

A stew of mutton and haricot beans with carrots, turnips, onions, and a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Haricot Mutton

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Haricot Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Wash the beans and soak them in cold water overnight until morning.

  2. Set the beans to stew until soft.

Prepare the vegetables and mutton

  1. Wash, peel and slice the carrots.

  2. Wash, peel and slice the turnips.

  3. Boil the carrots and turnips with the beans in 1 pint of boiling water for 20 minutes.

  4. Cut the mutton into small pieces.

  5. Heat the dripping in a frying pan and fry the mutton slightly, then remove the mutton from the pan.

Make the gravy and stew

  1. Fry the onions until brown.

  2. Strain the vegetables and beans.

  3. Thicken the water with flour.

  4. Fry the thickened water with the onions.

  5. Add the vegetables and thickened gravy to the mutton in a saucepan.

  6. Add more stock or water if necessary.

  7. Stew slowly without boiling for 1 hour or more.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat and rich flavour as it stews slowly.
Haricot beans
Add body and starch, thickening the stew as they soften.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Dripping
Carries heat for frying and adds savoury, rich flavour.
Onions
Browning in fat builds sweetness and depth in the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew slowly without boiling. Boiling toughens meat fibres and can break up the beans, so a gentle simmer keeps the mutton tender and the gravy smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, beans, carrot, turnip, flour, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, beans, carrot, turnip, flour, 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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