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Haricot of Mutton

A stew of sliced cold mutton with onion, turnip, potatoes, carrot, and flour, simmered slowly in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Haricot of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a deep saucepan, layer the sliced cold mutton.

  2. Add the chopped onion, turnip, potatoes, and carrot.

  3. Dredge the vegetables with flour, salt, and pepper.

  4. Cover with cold water.

Make the stew

  1. Boil slowly for 1 hour.

  2. Mix 2 tablespoons of flour with cold water.

  3. Add the flour mixture to the saucepan.

  4. Boil for an additional hour.

Serve

  1. Serve the haricot in a dish with a border of mashed potatoes.

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 + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold mutton
Main protein; slow simmering softens its connective tissue and makes the meat tender.
Potatoes
Their starch breaks down during cooking and helps thicken the broth.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so it becomes a gravy-like stew.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the broth as it softens.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Mixing the flour with cold water first keeps it from clumping when added to the hot liquid. The stew must keep boiling afterwards so the raw flour cooks through and thickens the broth evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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