Name: Mutton Broth
Ingredients: scrags of mutton; water; coarse sea salt; parsley; carrot; turnip; onion; flour

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mutton Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Pick and wash the parsley, then place it in a saucepan with boiling water and a pinch of coarse sea salt. Simmer for 1 minute, then chop finely.
In a pot, add scrags of mutton and cover with water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for several hours.
Remove the meat from the bones and chop it into small pieces.
In a separate pot, combine the chopped meat with fresh-boiled carrot, turnip, and onion. Add a little of the broth and season nicely.
Thicken the mixture with flour and gently simmer for 30 minutes.
Serve with caper sauce 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.

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.

Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,842 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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

Swap the onion

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

Parsnipfits better
Leekfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, parsley, carrot, turnip, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.