Name: Haricot of Mutton
Ingredients: 1 loin of mutton; flour; butter; gravy; 2 carrots, blanched and cut into neat shapes; 2 turnips, blanched and cut into neat shapes; coarse sea salt

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 chops

Cut the loin of mutton into chops and trim off all the fat.
Dredge the chops in flour and fry them in a small amount of butter until browned.

Stew and serve

Place the chops in a stewpan and cover them with gravy.
Allow the chops to stew until tender, then skim off the fat.
Add the blanched carrots and turnips, season with a little coarse sea salt, and let it stew gently for 15 minutes.
Serve the chops with the vegetables and gravy.

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.

Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,874 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + carrottop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,029 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,781 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mutton loin: Provides the meat that becomes tender through slow, moist stewing.
Flour: Coats the chops so they brown well and help thicken the gravy.
Butter: Adds fat for frying, carrying browning flavour onto the chops' surface.
Gravy: Provides the cooking liquid that keeps the chops moist as they stew.
Carrots: Add natural sweetness and hold their shape through gentle stewing.
Turnips: Add a mild, slightly peppery flavour and tender texture to the stew.

The step that matters

Browning the floured chops. Frying the flour-coated chops until browned builds deep flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale chops produce a flatter, less savoury stew, so they need enough heat and time to colour well.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, flour, butter, turnip):

Leekfits better
Shallotfits better
Arrowrootfits better
Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, butter, 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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Haricot of Mutton