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Mutton Haricot

A stew of mutton chops with carrot, turnip, onion, garlic, and cloves in brown gravy thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Mutton Haricot

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the mutton chops in butter until browned.

  2. Add the carrot, turnip, onion, garlic, and cloves; fry until they take on color.

  3. Pour in the brown gravy and let it simmer gently until the meat is cooked. Thicken the gravy with a little butter rolled in flour.

  4. Season with salt and Nepal pepper to taste.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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 chops
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender as it simmers slowly in the gravy.
Butter
Browns the meat and vegetables through frying, adding richness and flavor.
Brown gravy
Forms the cooking liquid that braises the meat and carries the flavor of the dish.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the gravy, giving it body and a smooth, coating texture.
Onion
Softens and sweetens during frying, building a savory base for the gravy.

The step that matters

Frying the mutton until browned. Browning creates flavorful Maillard reactions on the meat surface. Crowding the pan or frying at too low heat steams the chops instead, leaving the flavor flat and grey.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, onion, garlic, butter, 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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