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Lamb Soup

A hearty soup made with lamb neck and breast, water, salt, onions, carrots, turnips, potatoes, sweet herbs, tomatoes, and okras.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and okra share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lamb Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the neck and breast of lamb.

  2. Add 1 quart of water and 1 teaspoon of salt for each pound of meat.

Cook

  1. Boil the meat for 1 hour.

  2. Add the sliced onions, carrots, turnips, potatoes, and sweet herbs.

  3. If in season, add tomatoes and okras.

  4. Simmer until vegetables are tender.

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 + okratop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tomato + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Onion + okratop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 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

Lamb
Gives the broth its meaty flavor, and its connective tissue softens into gelatin that adds body.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet during simmering, adding aroma to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and become soft and tender as they cook.
Turnips
Soften during simmering and add a mild, slightly sweet flavor.
Potatoes
Soften as they cook and release starch that lightly thickens the broth.

The step that matters

Boil the meat for 1 hour. Lamb neck and breast contain connective tissue that needs a long, steady cook to break down into gelatin. Adding vegetables before this stage is done can leave the meat tough and the broth thin.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, onion, carrot, turnip, potato, okra):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, onion, carrot, turnip, potato, okra. 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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