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Ragout De Mouton

A slow‑cooked ragout of mutton, carrots, turnips, onions, and haricot beans in a butter‑flour sauce with claret.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic 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 ↓

Ragout De Mouton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into neat pieces, removing skin and fat.

  2. Fry the mutton pieces in butter until browned, then drain.

  3. Cut carrots into olive shapes.

  4. Cut turnips like pigeon eggs.

  5. Peel the onions.

  6. Fry each vegetable in butter until well browned, then drain.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour off some of the butter.

  2. Add flour and fry until nut-brown.

  3. Fry the garlic in the butter.

  4. Add stock, claret, and bouquet garni.

  5. Bring to a boil while stirring.

  6. Skim the mixture.

  7. Add the meat.

  8. Cook for about 30 minutes.

  9. Add haricot beans and fried vegetables.

  10. Season to taste.

  11. Simmer until tender.

Serve

  1. Dress the meat in the center of a dish.

  2. Surround with vegetables.

  3. Reduce the sauce slightly.

  4. Strain the sauce over all.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Beans + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,935 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

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 simmering in the sauce.
Butter
Carries flavor and browns the meat and vegetables, adding richness to the dish.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce and browns to add depth of color and flavor.
Haricot beans
Add body and starch, becoming creamy and tender as they simmer in the sauce.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavor that balances the richness of the meat and butter.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries flavor and cooks the meat and beans.

The step that matters

Fry the flour until nut-brown. Flour cooked in fat develops color and a toasted flavor, and it thickens the sauce. Undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste, while overcooked flour burns and turns bitter.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, flour, beans, carrot, onion, garlic. 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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