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Boiled Mutton

A boiled mutton leg served with a broth made from its cooking water, rice, vegetables, and optional tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Boiled Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the mutton

  1. Put the leg of mutton into boiling water to retain its juices.

  2. If desired, boil a piece of salt pork in the water first for added flavor.

  3. Skim off any scum just before the water boils.

  4. Boil the mutton for about 1.5 hours.

  5. Set aside the cooking water until the next day and remove the fat.

Make the broth

  1. In a soup pot, combine the reserved water, mutton bones, rice, carrots, turnips, onions, and leftover mutton.

  2. Boil the mixture for 2 hours to make a mutton broth.

  3. For a richer soup, add 12 tomatoes.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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, through its juices, the body of the broth.
Rice
Thickens the broth as its starch releases during long boiling.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat and seasoning to the cooking water when used.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the soup, making it richer.

The step that matters

Skim off any scum just before the water boils. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise as water heats; removing it early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pork, rice, carrot, turnip, 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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