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Haricot of Mutton

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Haricot of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the meat neatly, removing the chine bone and excess fat, leaving a little fat on.

  2. Brown the pieces of meat in a hot stewpan without dripping, then remove them.

  3. Fry the sliced onions in the fat from the mutton until golden brown, then remove the onions.

Make the gravy

  1. Add 1 tablespoon flour to the remaining fat, mix smoothly, and allow to brown slightly.

  2. Gradually pour in the water while stirring carefully until it boils.

  3. Add salt, pepper, ketchup, and parboiled vegetables.

Simmer

  1. Return the meat and onions to the pan and simmer for about 1 hour.

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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, whose connective tissue softens into tender pieces during long simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy as it browns in the fat.
Onions
Turn golden in the fat, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the gravy.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Adding the water to the flour. Pouring the water in gradually while stirring keeps the flour smoothly dispersed, so it thickens the gravy without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, pepper, mushroom, ketchup, 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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