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Cheap Broth

A hearty broth made from a sheep's head, mutton, onions, barley, and groats simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Cheap Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the sheep's head thoroughly.

  2. Boil it in plenty of water for 10 minutes with 1 tablespoon of salt. Discard the water.

Make the broth

  1. Combine the head, cut-up meat, onions, peppercorns, groats, barley, and 1 gallon of cold water in a large pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and skim the surface.

  3. Cover tightly and simmer gently for 6 hours, adding water as needed to maintain the original quantity.

  4. Strain the broth.

Finish and serve

  1. Rub the onions, barley, and groats through a sieve.

  2. Remove the fat from the broth.

  3. Add the thickened mixture and boil together.

  4. Serve.

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. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Onion + barleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Chicken + barleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Mutton + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together471 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Mutton + barleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together510 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Its starch thickens the broth as it cooks and is rubbed through a sieve.
Groats
Their starch thickens the broth, and they are rubbed through a sieve to add body.
Onions
They add savory sweetness and flavor to the broth, and are rubbed through to thicken it.
Sheep's head
Its bones, skin and connective tissue release gelatin and rich flavor during long simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer gently with the lid on. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear and lets collagen slowly release gelatin without breaking the meat apart. Boiling hard makes it cloudy and greasy, and topping up water keeps the volume steady for a proper body.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, chicken, barley. 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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