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Mutton Soup with Tapioca

A hearty soup made with lean mutton, bones, vegetables, and tapioca pearls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 with Tapioca

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Combine mutton and bones with 2 quarts of cold water in a large pot.

  2. Heat slowly until boiling.

  3. Add 2 quarts of hot water from the kettle once it boils.

  4. Cook the mutton steadily for 5 hours with the pot lid on, skimming off any fat that rises to the surface.

  5. Strain the broth into a large bowl and return it to the pot.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the vegetables and cover them with cold water.

  2. Simmer until tender, then drain and set aside.

Finish the soup

  1. Season with pepper and salt, then bring to a boil.

  2. Add the cooked vegetables and their liquid, heat together for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain again.

  4. Before adding the tapioca, bring the soup to a slow boil.

  5. Soak the tapioca in cold water for 1 hour.

  6. Cook in boiling water until clear.

  7. Stir the tapioca into the soup until dissolved.

  8. Serve with grated cheese on the side.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat flavor and rich body as it cooks slowly in the broth.
Bones
Release gelatin and marrow flavor into the broth, adding body and depth.
Tapioca
Thickens the soup as its starch gelatinizes, giving it a lighter, silkier body.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Cooking the tapioca. Tapioca must be soaked and then boiled until clear, and added to a simmering soup. Stirring it in cold or undercooked leaves starch grainy and lumpy, and it can thicken unevenly or stick to the pot.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, turnip, carrot, celery, parsley, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, turnip, carrot, celery, parsley, pepper. 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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