Name: Haricot of Mutton
Ingredients: cold mutton, sliced; 1 onion, chopped; 1 small turnip, chopped; 2 potatoes, chopped; 1 carrot, chopped; flour, for dredging; coarse sea salt, to taste; black pepper, to taste; cold water

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

Layer the sliced cold mutton in a deep saucepan.
Add the chopped onion, turnip, potatoes, and carrot.
Dredge the mutton and vegetables with flour, salt, and pepper.

Cook the stew

Cover with cold water and boil slowly for 1 hour.
Mix 2 tablespoons of flour with cold water and add to the saucepan.
Boil for 1 hour longer.

Serve

Serve on a platter, garnished with mashed potatoes, boiled rice, and a sprig of parsley.

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.

Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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

Flour: Thickens the cooking liquid into a richer stew as it simmers.
Potatoes: Soften during simmering, adding body and starch that helps thicken the stew.
Mutton: Provides the main meat flavour and becomes tender during slow boiling.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Flour mixed with cold water disperses without lumps before it goes into the hot pot. Stirred in dry or added hot, it clumps, and the starch cannot thicken the liquid evenly.

Swap the onion

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

Parsnipfits better
Leekfits better
Spinachfits better
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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Haricot of Mutton