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Mutton, Haricot

A mutton stew with onions, carrots, turnips, celery, mushroom ketchup, gravy, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Mutton, Haricot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Cut the cold mutton into moderate-sized chops and remove the fat.

Brown and stew

  1. Slice the onions and fry them with the chops in a little butter until nicely browned.

  2. Stir in the flour, add the gravy, and let it stew gently for nearly an hour.

  3. Meanwhile, boil the vegetables until nearly tender, slice them, and add to the mutton about 30 minutes before serving.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with pepper and salt, add the ketchup and port wine, bring to a boil, and serve.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Port wine + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together570 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 in the gravy.
Onions
Browning in butter adds sweetness and savoury depth to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the chops and vegetables.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onions and chops, adding richness and browning.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the stew once softened.
Turnips
Add mild earthy flavour and soft texture after boiling and simmering.

The step that matters

Stewing the mutton gently. Gentle, slow heat lets the connective tissue in the meat soften without toughening the muscle fibres. Boiling hard would make the meat stringy and can break up the flour-thickened gravy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, flour, pepper, port wine, mushroom, 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.

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