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Lamb Soup

A hearty lamb soup with carrots, turnips, onion, peas, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lamb Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Cut the loin of lamb into steaks.

  2. Place the lamb in a stewpan with gravy or lean beef.

  3. Add chopped carrots, turnips, onion, sweet herbs, pepper, and salt.

Simmer and finish

  1. Pour in enough water to make good soup and boil for three hours.

  2. Add peas long enough before serving to cook them.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lamb + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb loin
Provides the main meat and rich flavour as it cooks slowly in the broth.
Gravy or lean beef
Adds savoury depth to the broth, building a richer base flavour.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the soup as they soften.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and soft texture as they cook into the broth.
Onion
Builds aromatic savoury flavour that deepens during long simmering.
Peas
Add sweetness and a tender texture when cooked briefly at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the peas. Peas cook quickly and turn dull and mushy if simmered for the full three hours, so they should go in only shortly before serving.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

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