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Haricot Mutton

A mutton stew cooked with onions, carrot, turnip, and a flour roux in hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Haricot Mutton

Why it works: Carrot and turnip 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 Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the meat with a damp cloth if necessary and divide it into chops or trim the pieces nicely.

  2. Heat the dripping in a stew pan.

  3. Cut the onions into rings.

  4. Prepare the vegetables by cutting them into small squares, slices, or fillets as desired.

Brown and simmer

  1. Fry the meat lightly on both sides.

  2. Fry the onions with the meat.

  3. Pour the dripping from the meat, add the vegetables, flour, salt, and pepper, and stir well.

  4. Gradually add the hot water, stirring until it boils.

  5. Simmer for 1 to 1.5 hours, or until the meat is tender, stirring often to prevent burning.

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. Carrot + turniptop 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 protein; slow simmering breaks down its connective tissue until tender.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a stew-like sauce as it is stirred into the fat and broth.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and fry with the meat.
Dripping
Fat for frying that carries flavour and helps brown the meat.

The step that matters

Simmering the stew. Keep the heat low and stir often. A gentle simmer tenderises the meat slowly, while a hard boil or sticking to the pan can toughen the meat and scorch the flour-thickened liquid.

Swap the onion

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

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

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