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Haricot Mutton

A stew of mutton cutlets cooked with onions, stock, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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. Prepare the mutton by trimming the neck and cutting the cutlets to about ½ inch thick.

  2. Peel and slice one onion.

Brown and make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, heat 2 oz of butter and add the sliced onion and cutlets.

  2. Fry the cutlets over medium heat until they are nicely browned on both sides.

  3. Remove the cutlets and pour off excess grease, leaving the onion.

  4. Add 2 tablespoons of flour to the stewpan and gradually stir in ½ pint of second stock until it boils.

  5. Strain the sauce and return the cutlets to the pan.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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. Flour + turniptop 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

Mutton neck cutlets
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Second stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds savoury flavour.
Butter
Carries the frying and adds richness and browning to the cutlets.

The step that matters

Browning the cutlets. Frying the cutlets until well browned on both sides builds deep savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale meat will give a flatter-tasting stew.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, flour, carrot, turnip, butter. 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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