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An Excellent Broth

A broth made by boiling mutton loin in water with chervil, reduced to 2 quarts, fat skimmed, and salted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Mutton and chervil work together. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 31 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

An Excellent Broth

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the mutton in water with chervil until reduced to 2 quarts.

  2. Remove some of the fat and season to taste.

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. Mutton + cherviltop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together31 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Loin of mutton
Provides the main meat flavor and richness that the broth is built on.

The step that matters

Reducing the broth to 2 quarts. Boiling concentrates the flavor as water evaporates, so the broth needs enough time to reduce for a rich taste. Skimming fat afterward keeps the broth from tasting greasy.

“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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