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Sheep's Head and Barley Broth

A hearty soup made by simmering sheep's heads with barley, carrots, turnips, leeks, onions, celery, thyme, pepper, and sea salt.

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

Sheep's Head and Barley Broth

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the sheep's heads in a 3-gallon pot and fill it nearly full with cold water.

  2. Set the pot on the fire to boil, skimming off any scum that rises.

  3. Add the chopped carrots, turnips, leeks, onions, celery, thyme, black pepper, coarse sea salt, and barley.

  4. Allow the mixture to boil gently for at least 3 hours until the soup is cooked.

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. 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. Leek + barleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together142 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep's heads
Provide the meat and rich gelatin that give the broth its body and savoury depth.
Barley
Thickens the broth as its starch swells and softens during long simmering.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they soften.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and soft texture as they cook down into the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum. Foam rising during the first boil carries impurities that can make the broth cloudy and off-flavoured, so it should be removed as it forms.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, leek, celery, thyme, pepper, barley. 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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