Skip to main content
Main

Breast of Mutton

A broth made by simmering a mutton breast with vegetables and pearl barley, served cold or baked with stuffing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Breast of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the broth

  1. Place the breast of mutton or lamb in a kettle and cover with boiling water.

  2. Add the carrot, potato, celery, and soaked pearl barley.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Simmer for 2 to 3 hours.

Press the meat

  1. Remove the meat from the water.

  2. Slip out the bones.

  3. Press the meat between two pie pans.

Serve

  1. The next day, serve the meat sliced cold.

  2. Cover the meat with seasoned bread stuffing and bake.

  3. After removing the fat from the broth, serve the next day as Scotch broth.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Potato + barleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Carrot + barleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together784 recipes

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

  5. Celery + barleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together571 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Breast of mutton or lamb
Provides the main meat and rich fat that flavours the broth.
Pearl barley
Releases starch as it cooks, thickening the broth and giving it body.
Potato
Breaks down slightly during simmering, adding starch that gives the broth body.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Celery
Adds savoury aroma and background flavour to the broth.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, celery, barley):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, celery, 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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes