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Soup

To Hafh Mutton

A mutton soup made with gravy or broth, onion, pepper, salt, flour, butter, and diced mutton.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Hafh Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into small cubes.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the gravy or broth, onion, pepper, and salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat over the fire and thicken with flour and butter.

  2. Once boiling, add the mutton and shake until thoroughly heated.

  3. Serve in a soup dish.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  5. Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavorful as it heats in the broth.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smoother, heavier soup body when cooked with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the liquid as a thickener.
Gravy or broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the whole soup.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked into the butter and hot liquid so it dissolves evenly; added raw or in lumps it stays grainy and the soup turns thick in patches.

Swap the onion

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

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

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