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Mutton or Lamb Broth

A hearty broth made from mutton or lamb, water, onion, rice, and optional tomatoes, seasoned with pepper, salt, parsley, and thyme.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mutton or Lamb Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton or lamb into small pieces.

  2. Place the pieces in a pot with the cold water and salt.

Simmer the broth

  1. Cook for 4 to 4.5 hours.

  2. One hour before the soup is done, add the sliced onion.

  3. Prepare the rice as directed.

  4. Add the rice to the soup 30 minutes before serving.

  5. Stir the soup frequently to prevent scorching.

Finish and serve

  1. Season lightly before serving.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Thyme + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mutton or lamb
Provides the meat and rich flavor that builds the broth as it simmers slowly.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth during the final hour of cooking.
Rice
Thickens the broth slightly as its starch releases during the final simmer.

The step that matters

Stirring the soup frequently. Thick, starchy broth settles and sticks to the bottom of the pot during long simmering, so it can scorch. Regular stirring keeps the solids moving and prevents a burnt taste.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, rice, pepper, parsley, thyme):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, rice, pepper, parsley, thyme. 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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