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Haricot Mutton

A slow‑cooked mutton dish with onions, carrots, turnip, and a savory gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Haricot Mutton

Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Haricot Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Remove the chine bone and excess fat from the mutton, then cut into cutlets.

  2. Flour the cutlets and fry them in their own fat until browned, then remove from the pan.

Make the gravy

  1. In the same pan, heat 1 oz. of butter and fry the diced onion, carrot, and turnip for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the flour and cook until slightly browned, then add the water, mushroom ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, and sweet herbs.

  3. Return the cutlets to the pan, cover, and simmer slowly for 1 to 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve the vegetables in the center of a plate with the cutlets arranged around them, and strain the gravy over the mutton.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,796 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 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

Neck of mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Flour
Browned with the fat and vegetables, then thickens the liquid into a gravy.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, adding savoury depth to the gravy.
Carrot
Softens during simmering and adds gentle sweetness to the gravy.
Turnip
Softens during simmering and adds mild earthy flavour to the gravy.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury, tangy depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmering the cutlets slowly. Gentle, covered simmering lets the connective tissue in the mutton break down slowly, so the meat becomes tender without drying out. A hard boil toughens the meat and can reduce the gravy too quickly.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, mushroom, ketchup, sauce, flour, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, mushroom, ketchup, sauce, flour, butter. 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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