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Mutton Chop Broth

A broth made by simmering mutton chops with onion, salt, and water, optionally with turnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Chop Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the chops from a neck or loin of mutton into thin pieces.

  2. Place the chops in a stew pan with the onion, salt, and enough cold water to cover them.

Cook

  1. Bring to a boil, skim the surface, and let it stew slowly for 45-60 minutes.

  2. Optionally, boil turnips in the broth or separately and mash them.

  3. Serve the broth and meat together.

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 + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

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

  3. Mutton + turniptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,558 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton chops
Provide the meat and collagen that give the broth its body and rich flavour.
Onion
Adds savoury, aromatic sweetness to the broth as it simmers.
Turnips
Optional addition that adds mild sweetness and a soft, mashable texture.

The step that matters

Skim the surface after bringing to a boil. Foam and fat rise to the top when the liquid first boils. Skimming removes these impurities, leaving a clearer, cleaner-tasting broth. Keeping the stew at a slow simmer prevents the meat from toughening and the broth from turning cloudy.

Swap the turnip

The recipe marks turnip as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Turnipthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion. 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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