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Haricot of Mutton

A slow‑cooked mutton stew with onions, carrots, peas, and a tomato‑based gravy thickened with browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,606 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Haricot of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Cut the mutton into strips 3 inches long and 1 inch wide.

  2. Fry the mutton and sliced onion in butter until browned.

Stew

  1. Heat the gravy in a saucepan.

  2. Add the meat to the gravy.

  3. Stew slowly for nearly 1 hour.

  4. Add the carrot and peas, and stew for an additional 20 minutes.

  5. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  6. Season with pepper, salt, and catsup.

  7. Pour the mixture into the stew.

  8. Cook for 3 minutes.

  9. Add the sherry.

  10. Bring to a boil.

  11. Serve in a deep dish.

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. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + peastop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 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 protein, which becomes tender during slow stewing.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it browns in the butter.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the stew.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat and vegetables.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Fry the mutton and onion until browned. Browning creates deeper savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Meat that is crowded or steamed instead of seared stays grey and tastes flatter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, tomato, carrot, peas, sherry, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, tomato, carrot, peas, sherry, butter, flour. 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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