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Beef and Mutton Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, mutton, vegetables, and herbs, simmered for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Beef and Mutton Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place beef and mutton in a large pot with cold water, salt, and pepper.

  2. Set on low heat and skim the surface carefully.

  3. Add carrot, turnips, onions, celery, leeks, parsley, and garlic.

  4. Simmer for 4 to 5 hours.

Strain and serve

  1. Remove the meat and vegetables, and strain the broth.

  2. Skim off the fat and bring the broth to a boil.

  3. Serve the broth over croutons in a soup dish.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Releases flavor and gelatin into the broth during the long simmer, giving body.
Breast of mutton
Adds rich meaty flavor and body to the broth during simmering.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften in the broth.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the surface on low heat. Gentle heat and careful skimming remove coagulated proteins and impurities that would otherwise cloud the broth and muddy its flavor. Keeping the simmer low prevents the broth from boiling hard, which would emulsify fat into it and make it cloudy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, mutton, pepper, carrot, turnip, onion, celery):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mutton, pepper, carrot, turnip, onion, celery. 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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