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Haricot Mutton

A slow-cooked mutton stew with carrots, turnips, onions, cloves, wine, and soy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

  1. Place the mutton in a saucepan that covers tightly.

  2. Add the diced carrots, turnips, and onions around or under the mutton.

  3. Season with cloves, pepper, salt, and enough water to cover the mutton.

  4. Simmer for four hours.

Finish the gravy

  1. About 30 minutes before serving, add the white wine and soy sauce.

  2. Allow the water to reduce, leaving enough for gravy.

  3. Remove the mutton and skim off excess fat from the gravy.

  4. Stir flour into the gravy, bring to a boil, and pour over the mutton with the vegetables.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  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, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it comes to a boil.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the gravy as it reduces.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the stew as they soften in the liquid.
Onions
Add savory depth and sweetness to the gravy as they cook down.

The step that matters

Simmer for four hours. Long, gentle simmering breaks down the tough connective tissue in mutton. Boiling hard instead can toughen the meat and cloud the gravy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, turnip, onion, pepper, white wine, sauce):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, onion, pepper, white wine, sauce. 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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