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Mutton-broth

Mutton broth made with mutton, water, turnips, barley or rice, onions, pepper, parsley, thyme, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mutton-broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine the mutton, water, turnips, and pearl barley or rice.

  2. Add a few grains of whole pepper and the fried onions.

  3. Bring to a gentle boil and simmer for 3 hours, skimming frequently.

  4. Once tender, strain the broth from the vegetables.

Serve

  1. Mix in chopped parsley and thyme.

  2. Serve the broth with bits of toasted bread and the mashed turnips 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Gives the broth its rich meaty flavour as it simmers for hours.
Turnips
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they soften during cooking.
Pearl barley or rice
Releases starch that thickens the broth slightly.
Fried onions
Add savoury depth and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming during the simmer. Gentle simmering with frequent skimming removes foam and scum that rise from the meat, keeping the broth clear and clean-tasting rather than cloudy or greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, turnip, barley, pepper, parsley, thyme, bread):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, turnip, barley, pepper, parsley, thyme, bread. 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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