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Harricoed Mutton

A stew of mutton pieces with turnips, onions, garlic, bay leaf, thyme, and seasonings, simmered in broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Harricoed Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into pieces.

  2. Brown the mutton pieces in butter in a stew pan over medium heat, then remove the browned mutton from the pan.

  3. Drain excess fat from the pan.

  4. Peel and slice the turnips, then fry the sliced turnips until lightly browned on both sides.

Make the stew

  1. Add the mutton back to the pan with the turnips, broth, pepper, salt, parsley, onion, cloves, and bay leaf.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Skim off any fat.

  4. If the sauce is too thin, boil to reduce it.

Serve

  1. Serve the mutton in the center of a dish with turnips arranged around it.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow simmering and gives the stew its main flavour.
Turnips
Brown in butter for a sweeter, nutty flavour and hold their shape in the stew.
Butter
Fat for browning the mutton and turnips, building colour and savoury flavour.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma to the broth as it simmers with the meat.
Bay leaf
Adds a subtle aromatic herbal note to the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Browning the mutton. Searing the meat in hot fat before simmering creates browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or skipping this step leaves the meat steamed and the sauce flatter.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, turnip, pepper, thyme, clove, parsley):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, turnip, pepper, thyme, clove, parsley. 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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