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Mutton Broth

A hearty broth made from mutton scrags, onions, turnips, carrot, leek, celery, thyme, parsley, and pearl barley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Mutton Broth

Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Joint the bones of the mutton scrags and place them in a stewpan.

  2. Add the onions, turnips, carrot, leek, celery, thyme, and parsley.

  3. Fill the stewpan with slightly more than a gallon of water.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil. Skim the surface.

  5. Reduce the heat to simmer for 3 hours.

Add vegetables and barley

  1. Chop the additional vegetables into small squares.

  2. In a separate stewpan, combine the chopped vegetables with the pearl barley.

  3. Strain the broth through a fine sieve over the vegetables and barley.

  4. Boil the strained broth until the barley is tender.

Serve

  1. Serve.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Leek + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton scrags
Bones and meat release flavour and gelatin into the broth during long simmering.
Pearl barley
Starch thickens the broth slightly and softens into tender grains as it cooks.
Onions
Sweetness and savoury depth build as they cook slowly in the broth.
Turnips
Mild sweetness and earthy flavour develop as they soften in the liquid.

The step that matters

Skim the surface after boiling. Foam and fat rising at the start can cloud the broth and taste greasy; removing them keeps the liquid clear and clean-flavoured.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, clove, turnip, carrot, leek, celery, thyme):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, clove, turnip, carrot, leek, celery, 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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