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Haricot Mutton

A slow‑cooked mutton stew with turnips, potatoes, herbs, and a butter‑flour sauce.

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

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Haricot Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stew

  1. Melt butter in a large pot and add flour, then fry for about 15 minutes.

  2. Add mutton pieces and brown them.

  3. Stir in warm water, salt, and pepper.

  4. Add parsley, thyme, and bay leaf.

  5. Simmer for 1 hour.

Add the vegetables

  1. Fry turnips in a separate pan until browned.

  2. Add turnips and potatoes to the meat 1 hour before it is done.

Serve

  1. Once cooked, place the meat and vegetables on a serving dish.

  2. Skim the fat off the sauce.

  3. Pour the sauce over the meat and serve.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Thyme + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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, slow simmering.
Flour
Fried in butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the flour for the roux.
Turnips
Browned before adding, giving savoury colour and a slightly sweet, earthy flavour.
Potatoes
Add body and starch to the stew, helping thicken the sauce as they cook.

The step that matters

Add turnips and potatoes 1 hour before the end. Adding them too early lets them break down and cloud the sauce, while adding them too late leaves them undercooked. Timing them to finish with the meat keeps their shape and texture.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, butter, pepper, parsley, thyme, 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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