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To Make Midton Broth

A hearty mutton broth made with herbs, onion, bread crust, turnips, and optional barley or rice, thickened with oatmeal or bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 109 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Make Midton Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Cut the neck of mutton in two.

  2. Boil the neck in a gallon of water and skim well.

  3. Add the bundle of sweet herbs, onion, and crust of bread.

  4. Boil for 1 hour, then add the other part of the mutton, turnips, marigolds, chives, and parsley.

Season and finish

  1. Season with salt and add barley or rice if desired.

  2. Thicken with oatmeal or bread if preferred.

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 + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton neck
Provides the meat and bones that flavour and enrich the broth as it simmers.
Barley or rice
Adds body and a soft, starchy texture to the broth when cooked in it.
Oatmeal or bread
Thickens the broth through starch, giving it a fuller, more velvety body.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and vegetable flavour to the simmering broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the boiling neck. Skimming the foam that rises as the meat first boils removes impurities and fat, keeping the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, bread, turnip, chive, parsley, barley):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, bread, turnip, chive, parsley, 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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