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Mutton Broth

A clear broth made from boiled mutton water, bones, onions, carrots, turnips, rice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Mutton Broth

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 ↓

Mutton Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Set aside the water that the mutton was boiled in, in a stone jar or earthen dish.

  2. The next day, remove all the fat from the broth.

Simmer and finish

  1. Pour the broth into a soup pot and add the cracked bones, onions, carrots, and turnips.

  2. Let it boil for 1 to 2 hours.

  3. Use a skimmer to remove the bones.

  4. Add the rice and salt, then let it boil for another hour.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + ricetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together824 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

Rice
Thickens the broth as its starch releases during the long simmer.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the broth as they cook down.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body to the broth.
Turnips
Add mild earthy flavor and body to the broth during simmering.
Mutton bones
Release gelatin and flavor into the water during long simmering, enriching the broth.

The step that matters

Removing the fat the next day. Fat chilled and set on the surface of the stored broth; removing it fully keeps the soup clean-tasting and prevents a greasy mouthfeel.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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