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Mutton, Haricot

A slow‑cooked mutton stew with onions, cloves, herbs, mace, carrots, turnips, and a touch of sugar.

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

Mutton, Haricot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the mutton into square pieces.

  2. Fry the mutton pieces until nicely browned.

  3. Dredge the mutton with a little flour.

  4. Season the mutton with salt and pepper.

Make the stew

  1. Place the mutton in a stewpan.

  2. Moisten the mutton with boiling water.

  3. Add the onion (stuck with cloves), mace, and herbs.

  4. Simmer gently until the meat is tender, about 2 to 3 hours.

  5. Skim off all the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the carrots and turnips into dice.

  2. Fry the diced carrots and turnips in a little sugar until colored.

  3. Add the carrots and turnips to the stew.

  4. Simmer for an additional 10 minutes.

  5. Remove the onion and bunch of herbs before serving.

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. 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 and dredging with flour give the meat a savory crust and help thicken the stew.
Flour
Dusting the browned meat helps thicken the cooking liquid into a stew body.
Onion
Flavors the broth as it simmers and is removed before serving.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color, especially when fried in sugar until colored.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body to the stew as they cook through.

The step that matters

Fry the mutton until nicely browned. Browning through the Maillard reaction builds deep savory flavor on the meat's surface. Pale, steamed pieces make a flat-tasting stew, so the pieces need space and enough heat to brown.

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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