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Harricot of Mutton

A stew of mutton chops with turnips, onions, and a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Harricot of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Cut the mutton chops thicker than for broiling.

  2. Season both sides with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Fry the chops until browned on both sides but not cooked through.

Stew

  1. Place the chops in a stew pan with diced turnips and a few small onions.

  2. Simmer until the roots are tender but not broken.

  3. Remove the stew pan from the heat.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. In a separate pan, melt 1 ounce of butter until browned.

  2. Add flour to the browned butter and stir over heat until dry.

  3. Stir in the gravy from the chops and roots.

  4. Arrange the chops around a serving dish and place the roots in the center.

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. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + turniptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton chops
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and flavorful as they simmer.
Butter
Carries browning flavor and, with flour, forms the base that thickens the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when cooked into the browned butter until dry.
Turnips
Add body and mild sweetness as they soften during the simmer.
Small onions
Add savory, sweet depth to the stew liquid as they cook.

The step that matters

Simmer until the roots are tender but not broken. Cooking the turnips and onions gently keeps their shape intact; a hard boil breaks down their cell walls and turns them mushy, clouding the gravy.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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