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Mutton Tea

A light broth made from mutton, pearl barley, and water, seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and celery work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 571 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Mutton Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim all the fat from the mutton and cut it into small chops.

Simmer and strain

  1. In a stew pan, combine the mutton, barley, water, and salt.

  2. Simmer gently for 2 hours, then strain the mixture.

  3. If desired, add a small stick of celery for flavoring.

Defat and serve

  1. When cold, remove all the fat.

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. Barley + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together571 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Mutton + barleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together510 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Mutton + celerytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together928 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Scrag end mutton
Provides the meat and rich flavor that form the body of the soup.
Pearl barley
Releases starch during simmering, thickening the broth and adding body.
Water
Serves as the cooking liquid that extracts flavor from the meat and barley.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. A gentle simmer extracts flavor and keeps the meat tender, while a hard boil can toughen meat and cloud the broth.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, barley):

  1. Celerythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Pepperfits less well
  4. Cuminfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, barley. 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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