Skip to main content
Main

Mutton or Lamb Broth

A hearty broth made with mutton or lamb, rice, egg, milk, and flour, seasoned with pepper, salt, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mutton or Lamb Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, boil the mutton in water for 2 hours over low heat.

  2. Soak the rice in warm water until it is covered.

  3. Add the soaked rice to the soup and cook for an additional hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg and stir it into the milk, then mix in the flour until smooth.

  2. Add a little of the hot broth to the milk mixture, then pour the mixture into the soup.

  3. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and chopped parsley 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.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the meat flavor and body of the broth as it simmers.
Rice
Thickens the broth slightly as its starch releases during cooking.
Egg
Enriches the broth and thickens it gently when stirred in with milk.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the broth's richness.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so it blends smoothly into the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the milk and egg mixture to the soup. Egg proteins can curdle or scramble if the mixture hits very hot liquid directly. Tempering it with a little hot broth first warms it gradually, helping the mixture blend smoothly and stay silky.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, rice, egg, milk, flour, pepper):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, rice, egg, milk, flour, pepper. 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.

More mutton broth recipes

Scotch 33with Chops 5Jelly 3with Roots 3 See all 391 →

You might also like

Rice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipes