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Haricot Mutton

A mutton stew with onions, carrot, turnip, thickened with flour and flavored with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 the mutton

  1. Cut the mutton into neat pieces, about 2 inches square.

  2. Heat the dripping in a stew pan until it begins to smoke.

Make the sauce

  1. Slice the large onion and fry it in the hot dripping until very brown.

  2. Add the mutton pieces and fry until browned.

  3. Remove the browned mutton pieces from the pan.

  4. Pour out the dripping, leaving the onions in the pan.

  5. In a small bowl, mix the flour, salt, and pepper with the water, stirring well.

  6. Pour the mixture into the pan.

  7. Stir over heat until it boils.

  8. Strain the sauce into a bowl to remove the fried onions.

  9. Return the sauce to the pan.

  10. Add the mutton back into the pan, cover, and stew gently for 30 minutes.

Add the vegetables and serve

  1. Peel the small onions and cut the carrot and turnip into neat pieces.

  2. Add the vegetables to the pan and stew for an additional 20 minutes without stirring.

  3. Serve the meat with the vegetables arranged around it, and pour the sauce over everything.

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. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + flourtop 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 shoulder
Supplies the main meat, which becomes tender during the long gentle stew.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a sauce as it heats and boils.
Dripping
Fat for frying the onions and mutton, adding richness and browning flavour.
Large onion
Browned in the fat to deepen the colour and savoury flavour of the sauce.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the stew as it cooks in the sauce.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and a tender texture after stewing.

The step that matters

Browning the onion and mutton. Deep browning through the Maillard reaction builds the colour and savoury flavour of the sauce. Pale frying gives a flat, washed-out stew.

Swap the onion

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

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

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