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Haricot Mutton

A slow‑cooked stew of mutton with onions, carrots, turnips, and mushroom ketchup.

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. Wash and dry the mutton, then cut it into pieces, removing excess fat.

  2. Wash, scrape, and dice the carrots.

  3. Wash, peel, and dice the turnips and onions to match the carrots.

Make the stew

  1. In a saucepan, heat the dripping and brown the mutton on all sides.

  2. Add the diced vegetables to the saucepan, season with pepper and salt, and pour in 1½ pints of cold water.

  3. Mix the flour with a little water to form a smooth paste, then stir it into the saucepan.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil, skim, and add the mushroom ketchup.

  5. Reduce heat and simmer gently for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. To serve, arrange the meat in a circle on a hot dish, place the vegetables in the center, and pour the sauce over everything.

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. Carrot + peppertop 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. 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

Mutton
Provides the main meat, whose connective tissue softens into tender meat during long simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce as it heats.
Clarified dripping
Carries heat for browning the meat and adds rich, savoury flavour.
Onions
Soften during simmering and add sweetness and aroma to the sauce.
Carrots
Soften during simmering and add natural sweetness and body to the stew.
Turnips
Soften during simmering and add mild sweetness and texture to the stew.

The step that matters

Browning the mutton on all sides. Browning in hot fat creates Maillard reactions that build deep, savoury flavour. Meat that is crowded or not dried first steams instead, leaving the stew pale and flat.

Swap the onion

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

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

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