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Harricot of Mutton

A stew of mutton chops, 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 butter until browned; drain on a cloth.

Stew the meat

  1. Place the chops in a stewpan and cover with gravy made from the frying pan by adding boiling water.

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

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

Make the sauce and finish

  1. In the stewpan, melt some butter with a little flour until smooth, then gradually add the gravy and stir until it boils.

  2. Add the carrots, turnips, and parboiled onions to the meat, season with salt and pepper, and simmer for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the chops, place them in a dish, and cover with the 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long gentle stewing.
Flour
Dusting helps the chops brown, and cooked into butter it thickens the gravy.
Butter
Fat for frying the chops to brown them and for enriching the sauce.
Turnips
Vegetables that soften during stewing and add body and mild sweetness to the dish.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color to the stew and sauce as they cook.

The step that matters

Straining the gravy to remove fat. Fat left in the gravy can make the sauce greasy and keep it from thickening smoothly. Removing it before the flour and butter roux gives a cleaner, silkier sauce.

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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