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Neck or Mutton Breast Soup

A soup made from mutton neck or breast, ginger, onions, peppercorns, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,595 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Neck or Mutton Breast Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Cut the neck or breast of mutton into pieces and wash well.

  2. Boil in 3 pints of cold water over high heat.

  3. Skim off any impurities and reduce the heat.

  4. When the meat is tender, remove it from the pot.

Finish the soup

  1. Once cooled, remove the fat and warm the soup again before serving.

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. Ginger + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Mutton + gingertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together394 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton neck or breast
Provides the meat and bones that release flavour and gelatin into the broth.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they soften into the broth.
Green ginger
Adds a fresh, aromatic warmth that balances the richness of the mutton.

The step that matters

Skimming off impurities and reducing the heat. Foam and impurities rise to the surface as the water heats. Removing them keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting, and lowering the heat prevents a rolling boil that would make the broth cloudy and the meat tough.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Pepperfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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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