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Haricot of Mutton or Lamb

A slow‑cooked lamb or mutton stew with vegetables, thickened with browned flour and tomato ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Haricot of Mutton or Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Trim the fat from the leg of lamb or mutton and place it in a kettle.

  2. Cover the meat with water and skim off any foam as it boils.

Simmer

  1. Cover and simmer for 4 hours, salting it halfway through.

  2. Add the chopped onion, carrot, and turnip to the kettle.

  3. Allow the water to reduce until only enough remains for gravy.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Thicken the remaining liquid with browned flour.

  2. Stir in the tomato ketchup and bring to a boil.

  3. Serve the meat on a hot platter and pour the gravy 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.

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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of lamb or mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Browned flour
Thickens the reduced cooking liquid into a gravy.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the gravy.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam as the water boils. Foam carries impurities and scum from the meat into the liquid. Removing it early keeps the broth clear and the gravy clean-tasting.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, meat, onion, carrot, turnip, flour, ketchup):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, meat, onion, carrot, turnip, flour, ketchup. 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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