Skip to main content
Main

Mutton Broth

A clear broth made from lean mutton, water, and optional vegetables, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Mutton Broth

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the meat in a pot and cover with cold water.

  2. Heat gradually over a slow fire, simmering gently.

  3. Skim off any scum that rises to the surface.

  4. Simmer for 1.5 hours until the meat is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the meat for serving and add the chopped vegetables to the broth.

  2. If using pearl barley, boil it separately for 10 minutes, drain, and add to the broth.

  3. Season the broth to taste and serve the meat separately or with the broth.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + barleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Its connective tissue softens during slow simmering, enriching the broth with gelatin and flavour.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and aroma to the broth as it cooks.
Turnip
Contributes mild sweetness and body to the broth as it softens.
Onion or leek
Releases savoury, aromatic flavour compounds into the broth during simmering.

The step that matters

Heat gradually and skim the scum. Starting in cold water and heating slowly lets proteins coagulate gradually, so the impurities rise and can be skimmed off. Boiling hard breaks them up and clouds the broth.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, 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.

More mutton broth recipes

Scotch 33with Chops 5Jelly 3with Roots 3 See all 391 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipes