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Harico of Mutton

A mutton stew with wine, vegetables, and a butter‑flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot 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 ↓

Harico of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Cut the mutton into thin chops and coat with flour.

  2. Fry the chops in a small amount of butter until browned, then drain on a sieve.

Stew

  1. Place the chops in a stewpan and cover with the gravy made in the frying pan.

  2. Add the whole onion and two turnips, then stew until the meat is tender.

  3. Remove the chops, strain the gravy, and skim off the fat.

  4. In the stewpan, mix a little butter with flour, stir until smooth, then gradually add the gravy while stirring.

  5. Return the chops to the stewpan and add a glass of wine.

  6. Prepare blanched carrots and silver onions, cut into shapes, and add them to the stew.

  7. Season with pepper and salt, then stew gently for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Carefully remove the chops with a fork and serve with the sauce and vegetables.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow stewing.
Flour
Coats the chops for browning and thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Fat for frying the chops and enriching the sauce.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and flavour to the stewing liquid.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with butter and flour. Cooking the butter and flour together before adding the gravy lets the starch swell evenly. Stirring until smooth prevents lumps and gives the sauce a glossy, consistent body.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, butter, turnip, wine, carrot, pepper. 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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