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Mutton with Haricots

Mutton pieces stewed with beans, aromatics, and seasonings, then finished with browned gravy, breadcrumbs, and egg yolk butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion 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 with Haricots

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the mutton

  1. Cut the mutton into pieces.

  2. Brown the pieces in butter.

  3. Cook the mutton with chives, garlic, cloves, bay leaf, thyme, onions, carrots, turnips, pepper, and salt.

  4. Remove the mutton from the stew-pan and drain it.

Top and brown

  1. Place the mutton on a dish.

  2. Pour over high-seasoned gravy or its own skimmed gravy.

  3. Sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  4. Rub 3 egg yolks into a little oiled butter.

  5. Spread the mixture over the mutton.

  6. Sprinkle more bread crumbs on top.

  7. Set the mutton in a 400°F (200°C) oven or under a salamander.

  8. Baste with oiled butter until browned.

Serve

  1. Serve with strained and reduced 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.

  1. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Chive + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Chive + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, which becomes tender through long gentle cooking in the stew-pan.
Egg yolks (in the method)
Bind the buttery topping and help it set and brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the meat and enriching the topping and basting.
Bread crumbs (in the method)
Form a crisp, golden crust on the topping as they toast.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma to the gravy as they cook down.

The step that matters

Basting until browned. Basting with oiled butter keeps the topping moist while the proteins and sugars brown. Watching closely prevents it from scorching before the crust is evenly golden.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, chive, garlic, thyme, onion, carrot. 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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