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Mutton Broth

A clear broth made by simmering mutton neck with water, pearl barley, parsley, carrot, onion, celery, and turnip.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Mutton Broth

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mutton Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Start the broth

  1. Place the mutton and water in a large pot and bring to a boil.

Simmer

  1. Add the pearl barley and vegetables, all cut into dice.

  2. Simmer for several hours.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat with caper sauce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of mutton
Provides the meat and rich flavor, and its connective tissue softens into body in the broth.
Pearl barley
Its starch thickens the broth and adds body as it cooks.
Onion
Adds savory depth and mild sweetness as it softens in the broth.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and color to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer gently rather than boiling hard. A rolling boil churns fat and proteins into the liquid, making the broth cloudy and greasy. A gentle simmer lets the collagen in the neck slowly convert to gelatin, keeping the meat tender and the broth clear.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, barley, parsley, carrot, celery, turnip. 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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