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Leg of Mutton with Haricot Beans

A leg of mutton stewed with bacon, herbs, and gravy, served with boiled white haricot beans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Leg of Mutton with Haricot Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Remove the bone from the leg of mutton.

  2. Fill the hollow with minced meat, securing the skin over the opening.

Stew

  1. Boil the bone and trimmings with enough mutton broth or water.

  2. Add the sliced onion, carrot, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  3. Lay slices of bacon over the top of the leg.

  4. Stew gently with the lid closed for 3.5 hours or more.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the gravy.

  2. Boil it rapidly and reduce it to a glaze, or thicken it with browned flour.

  3. Serve the leg of mutton with the gravy.

  4. Arrange boiled haricot beans 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Mutton leg
Long gentle stewing turns the tough meat tender and gives the gravy its rich meaty flavour.
Bacon
Lies over the top of the meat, adding fat and savoury flavour that seasons the gravy as it cooks.
White haricot beans
Soft, mild beans that add body and starch to the plate alongside the rich meat.
Browned flour (in the method)
Optional thickener that gives the gravy body and a deeper colour when reduction alone is not enough.

The step that matters

Stew gently with the lid closed. Gentle, covered simmering breaks down the connective tissue in the mutton slowly. Boiling hard would toughen the surface and dry the meat before it becomes tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, parsley, pepper, beans, bread):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, parsley, pepper, beans, bread. 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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