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Mutton, Haricot

A mutton stew with onions, cloves, mace, herbs, carrots, turnips, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Mutton, Haricot

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the mutton

  1. Cut the mutton into square pieces and fry until nicely browned.

  2. Dredge the mutton with flour and season with pepper and salt.

Stew

  1. Place the mutton in a stewpan and add boiling water to moisten.

  2. Add the onion with cloves, mace, and herbs.

  3. Simmer gently until the meat is tender.

  4. Skim off all the fat.

  5. Cut the carrots and turnips into dice, fry them in a little sugar to color, and add to the stew.

  6. Let the whole simmer for another 10 minutes.

  7. Remove the onion and bunch of herbs before serving.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 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 gentle simmering.
Flour
Dusted on the meat to help it brown and thicken the stewing liquid.
Onion
Adds savory flavor to the stock; removed before serving.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body as diced vegetables in the stew.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body as diced vegetables in the stew.
Sugar
Caramelizes lightly with the vegetables, adding color and sweetness.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the meat is tender. Boiling toughens meat proteins and can make the broth cloudy; a slow simmer lets collagen break down gradually into tender meat.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, pepper, onion, clove, carrot, 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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