Name: Mutton Broth
Ingredients: 1 shoulder of mutton; 4 quarts of water; 3 or 4 turnips, chopped; 1 tablespoon coarse sea salt; ½ cup rice; a little parsley, chopped; drawn butter, for serving; capers, for serving; carrots and turnips, for garnish

Why it works: Turnip and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 145 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

Boil the shoulder of mutton in 4 quarts of water for 2 hours.
Add the chopped turnips, salt, and rice.
Continue boiling for 2.5 to 3 hours.
Add the chopped parsley 5 minutes before serving.

Serve

Serve the mutton with drawn butter and capers, garnished with carrots and turnips.

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.

Turnip + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together145 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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 shoulder: Provides the meat and rich flavour that the broth carries.
Rice: Thickens the broth slightly as its starch softens during long simmering.
Turnips: Add sweetness and body as they soften in the simmering liquid.

Swap the capers

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

Celeryfits about as well
Thymefits about as well
Marjoramfits about as well
Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, turnip, rice, parsley, butter, 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.