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Haricot Mutton

A slow‑cooked mutton stew with carrots, turnips, onions, cloves, wine, soy sauce, and a thickened gravy.

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 fits tightly.

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

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

Simmer and finish

  1. Simmer for 4 hours.

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

  3. Remove the mutton and skim off excess fat from the remaining liquid.

  4. Stir flour into the liquid to thicken the gravy and bring to a boil.

  5. Serve the mutton with the vegetables and gravy poured over it.

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 liquid during the final half hour of cooking.
Onions
Flavour base that softens and sweetens as it simmers in the liquid.

The step that matters

Stirring flour into the liquid. Flour added to hot liquid can clump if not stirred in well; whisking it smooth before or as it heats lets starch disperse evenly so the gravy thickens without lumps.

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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