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Haricot of Mutton

A slow‑cooked mutton stew with carrots, turnip, onion, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Haricot of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Cut the mutton chops thin from the neck or fore‑loin, removing the skin and fat.

  2. Fry the chops in fat until light brown, then remove them from the pan.

  3. Fry the sliced onion in the same pan.

Simmer

  1. Pour away the fat, then return the chops to the pan with half the grated carrot, pepper, salt, and hot water.

  2. Cover tightly and simmer slowly for two hours.

Thicken and serve

  1. Thicken the mixture with flour mixed with ketchup and Worcestershire sauce.

  2. Boil for a few minutes and skim off any fat.

  3. Garnish with boiled carrot and turnip cut into shapes.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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 chops
Provide the meat, which becomes tender during slow simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a stew-like sauce.
Onion
Adds savoury depth when fried before the stew is simmered.
Fat or dripping
Browns the chops and carries flavour from the start of cooking.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Simmering the chops gently with a tight cover. A slow, covered simmer breaks down the connective tissue in the mutton so it becomes tender. Boiling hard toughens the meat and can make the liquid cloudy or greasy, so keep it at a gentle simmer.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, ketchup, sauce, carrot, turnip, 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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