Skip to main content
Main

Haricot Mutton

A slow‑cooked mutton stew with carrots, turnips, onions, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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. Wash and dry the mutton, then cut it into pieces, trimming excess fat.

  2. Wash, scrape, and dice the carrots.

  3. Wash, peel, and dice the turnips and onions.

Make the stew

  1. In a saucepan, heat the dripping and brown the mutton on all sides.

  2. Add the vegetables to the saucepan, season with pepper and salt, and pour in the cold water.

  3. Mix the flour with a little water to form a smooth paste, then stir it into the saucepan.

  4. Bring to a boil, skim, and add the mushroom ketchup.

  5. Reduce heat and simmer for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat arranged in a circle on a hot dish, with the vegetables in the center and sauce poured over.

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. Onion + turniptop 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
Browning and slow simmering make the meat tender and flavourful in the broth.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften into the broth.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour while softening during the long simmer.
Turnips
Soften during simmering and contribute mild sweetness to the sauce.
Clarified dripping
Conducts heat for browning the mutton and adds rich, savoury fat.

The step that matters

Browning the mutton on all sides. Searing the meat in hot fat creates browned, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale, steamed meat produces a flatter-tasting stew.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, mushroom, ketchup, 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.

More mutton stew recipes

with Rice 14Irish 9with Carrots 5with Dumplings 4with Lettuce and Peas 4with Turnips 3 See all 234 →

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipes