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Haricot Mutton

A stew of lean mutton with carrots, turnips, and onions simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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. Place the carrot and turnip in boiling water for 5 minutes.

  2. Brown the mutton pieces in dripping in a stewpan.

  3. Slightly brown the onion slices.

Stew

  1. Pour away the dripping and add hot water or stock to cover the meat.

  2. Simmer with the lid on for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the vegetables and simmer for another 30 minutes.

  4. Five minutes before serving, add a little coloring.

Serve

  1. Serve with the meat and onions in the center, and the carrot and turnip arranged 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 + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Mutton + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Slow simmering softens its connective tissue into a tender, moist texture.
Dripping
Fat that conducts heat for browning the meat and adds savoury flavour.
Onion
Browning develops sweetness and savoury aroma that flavour the stock.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and holds its shape during long simmering.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and a firm, slightly starchy bite to the stew.

The step that matters

Brown the mutton pieces in dripping. Searing the meat in hot fat triggers the Maillard reaction, creating deep savoury browned flavour. Crowding the pan or leaving the meat wet causes steaming, which yields pale, bland meat.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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