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Lamb Soup

A hearty lamb soup with vegetables and optional tomatoes, okra, noodles, dumplings, or rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and okra share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lamb Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the lamb and add 4 cups of water and 1 teaspoon of salt for each pound of meat.

  2. Boil the meat for 1 hour.

  3. Add the sliced onions, carrots, turnips, potatoes, and sweet herbs to the pot.

  4. If in season, add the tomatoes and okras.

  5. Once the vegetables are cooked, remove the meat.

  6. Mix flour with a little water to form a smooth paste and add it to the soup.

  7. Optionally, add noodles, dumplings, or rice to thicken the soup.

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. Turnip + okratop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tomato + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Onion + okratop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 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

Lamb
Provides the main meat flavour and richness as its fats and juices enrich the broth.
Flour
Starch thickens the broth to a lighter, more body-filled consistency when mixed smooth first.
Potatoes
Starch softens during simmering, adding body and mild sweetness to the soup.
Carrots
Release natural sugars during simmering, adding gentle sweetness to the broth.
Turnips
Soften during simmering and contribute a mild, slightly peppery flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour paste. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps. Mixing it with a little cold water first to make a smooth paste lets the starch disperse evenly, so it thickens the soup without lumps.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, onion, carrot, turnip, potato, okra, flour. 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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