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Haricot Mutton

A slow‑cooked mutton stew with onions, carrots, turnips, mushroom ketchup, and a flour‑based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Haricot Mutton

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 Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the mutton, then cut it into pieces, removing excess fat.

  2. Heat the clarified dripping in a saucepan and brown the mutton pieces, turning to cook both sides.

  3. Wash, scrape, and dice the carrots.

  4. Wash, peel, and dice the turnips and onions to match the carrot size.

Make the stew

  1. Add the diced vegetables to the saucepan, season with pepper and salt, and pour in 1.5 pints of cold water.

  2. Mix the flour with a little water to form a smooth paste, then stir it into the saucepan.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil and skim off any foam.

  4. Add the mushroom ketchup.

  5. Reduce heat and simmer gently for two hours.

Serve

  1. Arrange the meat in a circle on a hot dish, place the vegetables in the center, and pour the sauce over everything.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Carrot + peppertop 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. Turnip + flourtop 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
Browning in fat builds savory flavor, and slow simmering turns the tough neck meat tender.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savory, umami depth to the sauce.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding body to the stew.
Carrots
Sweeten the broth and hold their shape through long simmering.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and firm texture to the stew.

The step that matters

Skim off any foam. Foam rising during the initial boil contains impurities and proteins that can cloud the broth and taste scummy. Removing it early keeps the sauce clear and clean-flavored before the long simmer.

Swap the onion

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

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

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