Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓
Mutton Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Soak the scrag half of the neck of mutton for 1 hour.
Place the scrag half in a soup pot with 2 quarts of water.
Bring the pot to a boil.
Skim the surface well.
Reduce the heat.
Simmer for 1.5 hours.
Trim some fat from the best end of the neck of mutton.
Add the best end of the neck of mutton to the pot.
Add enough boiling water to cover the best end.
Season with salt.
Make the soup
Skim when the soup begins to boil, then every 15 minutes.
Simmer slowly for 5 hours.
Add turnips, carrots, and onions 1.5 hours before serving.
Optionally, add small dumplings.
Thicken the soup with soaked rice, barley, green peas, young corn, or scalded, peeled tomatoes.
Serve
Cut the meat from the scrag into small pieces.
Serve the small pieces in a tureen with the soup.
Serve the remaining mutton on a separate dish with whole boiled turnips.
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.
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Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together629 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,842 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Rice + barleytop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together568 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Mutton neck
- Gives the soup its meaty flavour and rich body as it simmers slowly for hours.
- Turnips
- Add mild sweetness and soft texture to the soup as they cook through.
- Carrots
- Add natural sweetness and colour, softening during the long simmer.
- Onions
- Build savoury depth and aroma into the broth during the long simmer.
- Rice
- Optional thickener that releases starch into the broth as it cooks.
The step that matters
Skim the surface regularly. Skimming removes the foam and fat that rise as the broth boils. Leaving them in makes the soup cloudy and greasy, so skim when it first boils and about every 15 minutes.
Swap the peas
The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, turnip, carrot, onion, parsley, rice, barley):
- Beansfits better
- Lentilsfits better
- Chickpeafits better
- Peasthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, turnip, carrot, onion, parsley, rice, 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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