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Boiled Mutton

A hearty soup made by boiling a leg of mutton with rice, carrots, turnips, onion, and optional tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Prepare the broth

  1. Put the leg of mutton into boiling water and cook for about 1.5 hours.

  2. Skim off any scum that forms before the water boils.

  3. Set aside the cooking water until the next day.

  4. Remove the fat from the cooking water.

Make the soup

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

  2. Boil for 2 hours to make a nice mutton broth.

  3. If the broth is not rich enough, add 12 tomatoes for flavor.

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 bones, the body of the broth.
Rice
Thickens the broth slightly as its starch softens during the long boil.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they soften.
Turnips
Soften during the boil and add mild sweetness and substance to the soup.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and savory depth to a broth that needs more flavor.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum before the water boils. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise as meat heats. Removing it early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting instead of cloudy or greasy.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, 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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