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Harricoed Mutton

A mutton stew with turnips, seasoned with thyme, bay leaf, pepper, salt, parsley, onions, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Harricoed Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat and turnips

  1. Cut the mutton into pieces and brown them in butter over high heat.

  2. Remove the browned mutton and drain excess fat.

  3. Peel and slice the turnips, then fry them until lightly browned on both sides.

  4. Add the mutton and turnips back to the stew-pan.

Simmer the stew

  1. Moisten with broth and add pepper, salt, thyme, parsley, onions, cloves, and bay leaf.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes, then remove excess fat.

  3. If the sauce is too thin, boil to reduce it.

Serve

  1. Serve the mutton in the center of a dish with turnips arranged around it.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, whose connective tissue softens into tender bites during slow simmering.
Turnips
Brown on the surface and soften during simmering, adding a mild sweetness and body to the dish.
Butter
Carries the browning of the meat and turnips, building savory flavor on the surface of the pieces.
Mutton broth or hot water
Forms the cooking liquid that becomes the sauce as it simmers and reduces.

The step that matters

Draining the fat after browning and simmering. Mutton releases a lot of fat as it cooks. Leaving it in the pan makes the sauce greasy and heavy, so removing it after browning and again after simmering keeps the sauce clean-tasting.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, turnip, pepper, thyme, parsley, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, turnip, pepper, thyme, parsley, clove. 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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