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Haricot of Mutton

A stew of mutton chops with carrots, turnips, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chops

  1. Cut the loin of mutton into chops and trim off all the fat.

  2. Dredge the chops in flour and fry them in a small amount of butter until browned.

Stew

  1. Transfer the chops to a stewpan and cover with gravy.

  2. Allow to stew until tender, then skim off the fat.

  3. Add blanched carrots and turnips cut into neat shapes, along with a little coarse sea salt.

  4. Let it stew gently for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the chops with the vegetables and gravy.

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. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + carrottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Loin of mutton
Provides the meat that becomes tender through slow, moist stewing.
Flour
Coats the chops so they brown well and help thicken the gravy.
Butter
Fat for frying the floured chops, adding browning and richness.
Gravy
Liquid that cooks the chops and vegetables, carrying flavour through the stew.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the stew as they soften.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and texture as they soften in the stew.

The step that matters

Fry the floured chops until browned. Browning the flour-coated chops in butter builds roasted flavour and colour that carries into the gravy. Pale chops give a flat, washed-out stew.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

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