Skip to main content
Main

Mutton Stew with White Beans

A hearty stew of mutton and white beans simmered with onions, carrots, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Mutton Stew with White Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the beans separately and set aside.

Make the stew

  1. In a saucepan, brown the mutton pieces.

  2. Add the onions, carrots, and flour; cook for several minutes.

  3. Moisten with water, then add salt, pepper, tomato puree, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, and garlic.

  4. Cover and simmer gently for about 1 hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer the mutton to another saucepan and strain the sauce over it.

  2. Add the cooked white beans and simmer for 25 to 30 minutes.

  3. Skim the stew before serving.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Browning and slow simmering make the meat tender and give the stew its savory base.
Flour
Cooked with the vegetables, it thickens the sauce as it simmers with the water.
Tomato puree
Adds acidity and concentrated savory flavor to the sauce.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, building the flavor base of the sauce.
White beans
Add body and starch to the stew, soaking up flavor from the sauce.

The step that matters

Brown the mutton pieces. Browning creates deep flavors through the Maillard reaction. Pale, steamed meat gives a flat-tasting stew, so the pieces need space and enough heat to brown well.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, flour, pepper, tomato, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes