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Haricot of Mutton

A stew of mutton fat, flour, carrots, turnips, onions, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 fat into thin steaks.

  2. Flour the steaks and fry them in a frying pan until lightly browned.

  3. Place the fried steaks in a dish.

Fry the vegetables

  1. Fry the carrots, turnips, and sliced onions in the same pan.

Stew

  1. Layer the steaks at the bottom of a stewpan.

  2. Add the vegetables on top.

  3. Cover with boiling water.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. Skim the surface.

  6. Reduce heat.

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 + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + carrottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 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

Fat from the neck of mutton
Provides the rich, savoury fat that flavours the stew and carries its taste.
Flour
Coats the steaks so they brown well in the pan and helps thicken the stew liquid.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the stew as they soften during cooking.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and a soft texture to the stew.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma as they soften and sweeten while frying.

The step that matters

Skim the surface. Once the water reaches a boil, fat and fine impurities rise to the top. Removing them keeps the broth clear and stops it tasting greasy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, 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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