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Haricot Mutton

A mutton stew with onions, carrots, turnip, and herbs simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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. Cut the mutton into neat joints and the vegetables into dice.

  2. Melt the dripping in a saucepan over medium heat.

Brown and flavour

  1. Fry the meat until browned all over, then remove from the pan.

  2. Add the vegetables to the pan and brown them slightly.

  3. Stir in the flour and let it brown together with the vegetables.

Simmer and serve

  1. Add the stock or water, thyme, marjoram, bay leaf, and celery seeds tied in muslin, and stir until boiling.

  2. Return the meat to the pan and simmer gently for 1½ to 2½ hours.

  3. If the stew is too thick, add a little more stock or water.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste before serving.

  5. Remove the bunch of herbs before serving.

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. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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 main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Browns with the vegetables and thickens the stock into a stew.
Dripping or butter
Carries the heat for browning the meat and vegetables and adds richness.
Onion, carrot, and turnip
Add sweetness and body to the stew as they soften and brown.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. A rapid boil toughens the meat's muscle fibres and can break up the vegetables, while a gentle simmer lets connective tissue slowly soften into tender meat.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, pepper, thyme. 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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