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Mutton Soup

A hearty soup made with mutton, onions, turnips, tomatoes, and barley or rice, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Mutton Soup

Why it works: Turnip and barley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 629 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, combine water, mutton, onions, turnips, tomatoes, and barley or rice.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer for 4 hours.

  3. Remove the meat from the pot.

  4. Season the soup with salt, pepper, and thyme before serving.

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. Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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
Provides the main meat flavour and richness as it simmers into the broth.
Barley or rice
Thickens the broth slightly and adds body as the grains soften during simmering.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body to the broth as they cook through.
Onions
Build savoury depth and aroma in the broth as they soften.

The step that matters

Simmering for 4 hours. A gentle simmer, rather than a hard boil, lets the meat release its flavour slowly and keeps the broth clear. Boiling too hard can make the broth cloudy and the meat tough.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, turnip, barley, pepper, thyme):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, turnip, barley, pepper, thyme. 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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