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Mutton Broth

A simple mutton broth with rice, onion, turnip, and salt simmered for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Mutton Broth

Why it works: Onion and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine the mutton and water.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 2 to 3 hours.

Add vegetables and finish

  1. Add the rice, onion, turnip, and salt.

  2. Continue to simmer until the vegetables are tender.

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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Rice + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Mutton + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the meat flavour and richness that build the broth's body as it simmers.
Rice
Thickens the broth slightly as its starch releases during simmering.
Onion
Adds savoury, sweet aromatic depth to the broth as it softens.
Turnip
Softens during simmering and adds mild sweetness and body to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmering the mutton gently. A gentle simmer, not a hard boil, lets collagen and flavour slowly leave the meat while keeping the broth clear. Boiling hard can cloud it and toughen the meat.

Swap the onion

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

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

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