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Haricot Mutton

A stew of mutton chops with onions, carrot, turnip, and a sauce made from stock, mushroom ketchup, and seasonings.

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

Brown the chops

  1. Roll the mutton chops in flour and brown them quickly in the dripping.

  2. Place the browned chops in a stewpan and pour over the heated stock or water.

Stew

  1. Skim the surface when boiling, then add the sliced vegetables.

  2. Cook slowly for 45 minutes.

Serve

  1. Arrange the cutlets around a dish with the vegetables in the center and pour sauce around.

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. 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 chops
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during slow stewing.
Flour
Coats the chops and thickens the stock into a sauce as it cooks.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the stewing liquid as they soften.
Dripping
Carries heat for quick browning and adds richness to the meat's surface.

The step that matters

Browning the chops quickly. Searing flour-coated meat over high heat builds browned flavour and colour. If the chops are crowded or cooked too slowly, they steam and turn grey, and the stew tastes flatter.

Swap the onion

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

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

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