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Mutton, Haricot

A mutton stew with carrots, turnip, onion, and stock, finished with ketchup, pepper, and salt.

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

Mutton, Haricot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Trim excess fat from the mutton and cut it into thin chops.

  2. Fry the chops in a little fat until pale brown.

Build the stew

  1. In the same fat, fry the diced carrot, turnip, and sliced onion without browning them.

  2. Layer the mutton at the bottom of a stewpan, followed by the vegetables.

  3. Pour enough boiling stock over the mutton and vegetables to cover them.

  4. Bring to a boil, skim well, and then simmer for 1 hour.

Season and serve

  1. Add ketchup, pepper, and coarse sea salt to taste, and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, which becomes tender during the long simmer.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the stew as it softens.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and body as it softens in the stock.
Onion
Adds savoury flavour and sweetness as it cooks gently in the fat.

The step that matters

Frying the vegetables without browning them. Gently softening the carrot, turnip and onion keeps their sugars mild and avoids a bitter, scorched taste that would carry into the stock.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, ketchup, 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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