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Mutton Soup

A hearty soup made with mutton neck, bacon, peas, turnips, carrots, sweet herbs, onions, cabbage, lettuce, green peas, parsley, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Mutton Soup

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mutton Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pea base

  1. In a saucepan, combine the bacon and enough water to boil the peas. Add the peas and boil until they become a pulp.

  2. Strain the peas through a cloth and set them aside.

Make the soup

  1. Add enough water to the saucepan with the bacon to boil the mutton. Add the sliced turnips and carrots, and boil slowly for 1 hour.

  2. Add the sweet herbs, onions, cabbage, and lettuce. Stew for an additional 15 minutes until the mutton is cooked.

  3. Remove the mutton from the pot. Add the fresh green peas and chopped parsley to the soup.

  4. Stir in the strained peas and the lump of butter rolled in flour. Stew until the green peas are cooked.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 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 neck
Provides the meat and rich flavour that forms the body of the soup.
Peas
Boiled to a pulp, they thicken the soup and give it body and colour.
Butter rolled in flour
A flour-and-fat paste that thickens the soup as it stews, adding smoothness.
Turnips
Soften during long simmering, adding sweetness and body to the broth.
Carrots
Soften during simmering, adding natural sweetness to the broth.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter and flour. Flour mixed into fat and added to hot liquid must be stirred well and stewed long enough, or it forms lumps and leaves a raw floury taste instead of a smooth, thickened soup.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, turnip, carrot, onion, cabbage, lettuce, parsley):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, turnip, carrot, onion, cabbage, lettuce, parsley. 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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