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Mutton Broth, to Make Quickly

A quick mutton broth made with chops, water, herbs, onion, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mutton Broth, to Make Quickly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  2. Put the meat and bones into a saucepan, without skin or fat.

Make the broth

  1. Add the water, herbs, onion, pepper, and salt.

  2. Cover the saucepan and bring to a boil quickly.

  3. Remove the lid and boil rapidly for 20 minutes, skimming regularly.

  4. Strain the broth into a basin.

  5. If fat remains, cool the broth and remove it with a piece of thin paper.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Meat and bones release flavour and body into the water as they simmer.
Sweet herbs
Add aromatic flavour to the broth as it cooks.
Onion
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming while boiling rapidly. Fat and fine impurities rise to the surface during boiling. Skimming them off regularly keeps the broth clear and less greasy, while the rapid boil extracts flavour from the meat and bones.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, 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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