Skip to main content
Main

Haricot Mutton

A slow‑cooked mutton stew with carrots, turnip, onions, and a mushroom ketchup gravy.

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 the meat

  1. Wipe the meat with a clean, damp cloth.

  2. Cut the meat into neat pieces.

  3. Remove excess fat.

Brown and make the gravy

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the meat and brown it.

  3. Remove the meat to a plate.

  4. Fry the onions in the same butter.

  5. Mix the flour smoothly with the cold water.

  6. Add pepper, salt, and mushroom ketchup.

  7. Pour the mixture into the pan.

  8. Stir until boiling.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the meat and vegetables.

  2. Stew gently for two hours.

  3. Serve the meat in a circle, with vegetables in the center and gravy around.

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. 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. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long gentle stewing.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy as it heats.
Butter
Carries the browning of the meat and onions and adds richness to the gravy.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, adding savoury depth to the gravy.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and firm texture that holds up to long stewing.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and soft texture as it cooks in the stew.

The step that matters

Brown the meat before stewing. Browning creates deep flavour through the Maillard reaction, which happens only on dry, hot meat surfaces. Crowding the pan or adding wet meat causes steaming, leaving the stew pale and bland.

Swap the onion

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

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

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