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Veal or Mutton Broth

A clear broth made from mutton, barley or rice, and vegetables, simmered until reduced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Veal or Mutton Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the mutton in a saucepan with cold water and pearl barley or rice.

  2. Bring to a boil, skimming the surface well.

  3. Add salt and let it boil until reduced by half.

  4. Strain the broth and remove all fat.

Add the vegetables and serve

  1. For added vegetables, shred the turnip, carrot, and onion, and boil them in the broth for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve the barley with the vegetables and broth if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Barley + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together784 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton scrag-end
Gives the broth its meaty flavour and body as it simmers in the water.
Pearl barley or rice
Thickens the broth slightly and adds starchy body as it cooks.
Turnip, carrot, and onion
Add sweetness and aromatic vegetable flavour to the finished broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the surface after boiling. Foam and impurities rise to the surface as the broth comes to a boil. Removing them early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting, and removing fat after straining gives a lighter result.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, barley, turnip, carrot. 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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