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Harricot of Mutton

A stew of mutton chops with onions, turnips, carrots, and a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot 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 ↓

Harricot of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Cut the mutton into equal-thickness chops.

  2. Dust the chops with flour and fry them in a little butter until browned.

  3. Drain the chops on a cloth and place them in a stewpan.

  4. Cover the chops with gravy made from the frying pan by adding boiling water.

Stew

  1. Add the onions and sliced turnips, then stew gently until the meat is tender.

  2. Remove the chops and vegetables, strain the gravy to remove fat.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In the stewpan, melt some butter with a little flour until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the strained gravy, stirring until it boils.

  3. Add sliced carrots and turnips, season with salt and pepper, and simmer for 15 minutes.

  4. Return the chops to the dish, cover with sauce and vegetables.

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. Turnip + carrottop 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. Flour + turniptop 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 the floured chops adds flavour, and slow stewing makes the tough meat tender.
Flour
Dusting the chops and thickening the butter mixture helps the sauce turn smooth and thick.
Butter
Frying gives the chops browning, and melted butter with flour forms the base of the sauce.
Turnips
Turnips soften during stewing and add a mild sweetness to the gravy.
Carrots
Carrots soften during simmering and add mild sweetness and colour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the floured chops. Flour-dusted meat browns through the Maillard reaction, which builds the savoury flavour of the gravy. Pale chops give a flat, weaker-tasting stew.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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