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Mutton, Haricot

A slow‑cooked mutton stew with carrots, turnips, onions, and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. Trim off some of the fat from the mutton.

  2. Cut the mutton into pieces and brown them in a pot.

  3. Chop the carrots, turnips, and onions, then add them to the pot.

Simmer and serve

  1. Season with pepper and salt, and add enough water to cover the ingredients.

  2. Simmer until the meat is tender, about 1.5 to 2 hours.

  3. Stir in the ketchup or Harvey's sauce 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. Turnip + oniontop 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. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 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 rich meat flavour, and its connective tissue softens into tender meat during slow simmering.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the stewing liquid as they soften.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and soak up the cooking liquid, thickening the stew slightly.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma that builds as they soften in the broth.
Ketchup or harvey's sauce
Adds acidity and savoury, sweet-tangy depth to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Simmer until the meat is tender. Mutton is tough connective tissue that needs long, gentle simmering to break down. Boiling hard can toughen the proteins and leave the meat stringy, so keep the liquid at a slow bubble.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, pepper, ketchup. 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.

More mutton stew recipes

with Rice 14Irish 9with Carrots 5with Dumplings 4with Lettuce and Peas 4with Turnips 3 See all 234 →

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