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Harricoed Mutton

A stew of mutton pieces with turnips, onions, cloves, thyme, bay leaf, and seasonings.

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

Harricoed Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into pieces.

  2. Brown the mutton in butter over high heat, then remove the mutton and drain.

Make the stew

  1. Peel and slice the turnips, then fry them until lightly browned.

  2. Add the turnips to the mutton.

  3. Moisten with broth and add pepper, salt, parsley, onion, cloves, and bay leaf.

  4. Stew for 30 minutes and remove excess fat.

  5. If the sauce is too thin, boil to reduce.

Serve

  1. Serve the mutton in the center of a dish with turnips arranged around it.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 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. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 slow stewing in liquid.
Turnips
Add body and a mild sweetness that soften during stewing and brown lightly first.
Butter
Browns the mutton and adds richness and flavor to the surface.
Mutton broth
Provides liquid for stewing and builds a savory sauce that reduces when boiled.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Browning the mutton in butter over high heat. Searing creates browned surface flavors through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or using too little heat steams the meat instead, leaving the stew flatter in flavor.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, turnip, pepper, thyme, parsley, clove. 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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