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Mutton-broth Diet

A diet consisting of mutton broth with barley, served with milk for breakfast and gruel for supper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Mutton-broth Diet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Weigh the neck of mutton with the bone before cooking.

  2. In a pot, combine the mutton and broth, and bring to a boil.

  3. Add barley to the pot and simmer until the mutton is tender.

Serve

  1. Serve the mutton in the broth with barley.

  2. For breakfast, serve ½ pint of milk and for supper, serve 1 pint of gruel.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + muttontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + barleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together201 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + barleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  5. Mutton + barleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together510 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of mutton
Main protein; the bone and connective tissue enrich the broth while the meat becomes tender.
Barley
Softens as it simmers, releasing starch that thickens the broth and adds body.
Broth
Liquid base that carries flavor and keeps the mutton moist as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmer until the mutton is tender. Once the mixture reaches a boil, a gentle simmer cooks the meat slowly. Hard boiling toughens muscle fibers and can make the broth cloudy, while slow heat lets connective tissue break down into a tender texture.

“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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