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Haricot De Mutton

A slow-cooked mutton stew with turnips, herbs, and a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 De Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, mix butter and flour over low heat, stirring until it turns cinnamon-colored.

  2. Add the mutton pieces and cook for 2-3 minutes, then gradually stir in hot water or stock.

Stew

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

  2. Cook over low heat, skimming off fat as it cooks.

  3. Add turnips and stew until both the meat and turnips are tender.

  4. Remove herbs, skim remaining fat, and reduce sauce to a thick cream consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve the turnips and meat 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
Slow stewing turns the tough shoulder meat tender and gives the stew its rich, savory flavor.
Flour
Cooked with butter into a roux, it thickens the hot liquid into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Butter
Carries fat into the roux, adding richness and a nutty, browned flavor to the base.
Turnips
Soften during stewing and add mild sweetness that balances the savory meat and sauce.

The step that matters

Brown the flour and butter roux slowly. Over low heat the flour and butter cook gradually, building color and a nutty flavor while removing raw starch taste. Rushing on high heat can scorch the fats and leave bitter notes, and it also makes thickening uneven.

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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