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Haricot of Mutton

A slow‑cooked mutton stew with turnips, herbs, and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

Haricot of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Cut the shoulder of mutton into pieces about the width of two fingers.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat, then stir in the flour until it turns the color of cinnamon.

  3. Add the mutton pieces and give them two or three turns in the pan.

  4. Gradually stir in the hot water to combine with the flour and butter mixture.

Simmer the stew

  1. Season with salt and pepper, then add parsley, green onions, bay leaf, thyme, basil, cloves, and garlic.

  2. Cook over low heat, skimming off excess fat when half done.

  3. Prepare turnips by peeling and cutting them into pieces, then add them to the pot with the meat.

  4. Once the turnips are cooked, remove the herbs and skim off any remaining fat.

  5. If the sauce is too thin, reduce it over the heat until it thickens to a cream-like consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve the turnips and mutton on a plate with the sauce.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Parsley + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton shoulder
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow, low-heat cooking.
Flour
Browned with butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Butter
Carries flavour and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Turnips
Add sweetness and body as they soften in the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Browning the flour and butter. Cooking the flour in butter until it turns the colour of cinnamon develops nutty flavour and gives the roux thickening power. Over high heat it can scorch and taste bitter, so keep the heat low.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, flour, pepper, parsley, thyme, basil. 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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