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Haricot Mutton

A stew of mutton cutlets simmered in a flour‑thickened stock with onions, carrot, turnip, and button onions.

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

  1. Prepare the mutton by trimming the neck and cutting it into cutlets.

  2. Beat each cutlet to about ½ inch thick and trim the edges.

  3. Peel and slice the onion.

Fry the cutlets

  1. In a stewpan, heat the butter and fry the cutlets until golden brown, turning to cook evenly.

  2. Remove the cutlets and pour off excess grease, leaving the onion in the pan.

Make the sauce

  1. Add flour to the pan, then gradually stir in the stock until it boils.

  2. Strain the sauce before serving.

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. Pepper + carrottop 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
Forms the main body of the dish and gives it its meaty flavour.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and helps the cutlets brown to a golden colour.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying savoury flavour.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens in the pan.

The step that matters

Adding the stock to the flour. Flour clumps if liquid is poured in all at once. Adding stock gradually while stirring lets the starch disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly as it comes to the boil.

Swap the onion

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

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

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