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Mutton Bboth

A hearty broth made from boiled mutton, 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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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 Bboth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Strain the water from the boiled mutton into a stone jar or earthen dish.

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

Simmer

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

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer for 1 to 2 hours.

  3. Remove the bones with a skimmer.

  4. Add the rice and salt.

  5. Let it boil for an additional 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.

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

Mutton bones
Release gelatin and savory flavor into the broth during the long simmer.
Rice
Thickens the broth slightly as its starch releases during boiling.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and release flavor into the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they cook down.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and substance as they soften in the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Removing the fat. Chilling the broth overnight lets fat solidify on the surface so it can be lifted off. Leaving fat in gives a greasy, heavy broth with an unpleasant 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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