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Haricot Mutton

A stew of mutton pieces simmered with onions, carrots, turnips, and optional haricot beans, thickened with flour.

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

Brown the meat

  1. Brown the mutton pieces in hot fat.

  2. Place the browned mutton in a stewpan and cover with stock or water.

Make the stew

  1. Add the browned onions, cloves, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Add the cut carrots and turnips, then simmer for one hour.

  3. If desired, add cooked haricot beans just before serving.

Thicken and serve

  1. Remove the meat and vegetables and place them on a hot dish.

  2. Skim the fat from the gravy, thicken it with brown flour, and pour over the meat.

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. Clove + peppertop 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 during the long, slow simmer.
Brown flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the meat and vegetables.
Onions
Browned onions add savory depth and sweetness to the stock.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the stew as they soften during simmering.
Turnips
Add mild earthy flavor and body as they cook in the stew.

The step that matters

Skim the fat from the gravy before thickening. Fat left on the surface makes the gravy greasy and can prevent the flour from thickening it smoothly, so removing it first gives a cleaner, better-textured sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

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