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Haricot Mutton

A mutton stew with turnips, onions, carrots, thickened with flour and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Haricot Mutton

Why it works: Turnip and carrot 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

Brown the mutton

  1. Heat dripping in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. Add the mutton and brown it well.

Simmer and thicken

  1. Add the turnips, onions, carrots, and enough water to cover the ingredients.

  2. Thicken the mixture with flour, salt, and pepper to taste.

  3. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 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 neck
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a richer, stew-like sauce.
Turnips
Add body and mild sweetness as they soften in the stew.
Onions
Build savory depth and sweetness as they cook down in the liquid.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color while holding their shape during simmering.
Dripping
Carries heat for browning the mutton and adds rich, meaty flavor.

The step that matters

Brown the mutton well. Browning creates deep, savory flavors through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or stopping early causes steaming, which leaves the meat pale and less flavorful.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, turnip, carrot, 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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