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Haricot Mutton

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

Prepare the meat

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

  2. Dredge the meat with flour, salt, and pepper.

Stew

  1. Place in a stew-pan and moisten with boiling water.

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

  3. Simmer until the meat is done, then skim off the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Add diced carrots and turnips fried in sugar and simmer for 10 minutes.

  2. Remove the onion and herbs, then 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. 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
Browning the pieces and simmering slowly makes the meat tender and flavorful.
Flour
Dredging the meat helps thicken the cooking liquid and lightly coat the pieces.
Onion
Stuck with cloves, it flavors the broth as it simmers and is removed before serving.
Carrots
Adds natural sweetness and body to the stew as they cook in the broth.
Turnips
Adds mild sweetness and a firmer texture to the stew as they cook.

The step that matters

Frying the mutton until nicely colored. Browning the meat creates deeper flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pale meat added to the stew gives a flatter, less savory broth.

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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