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Brown Soup From Tinned Mutton

A brown soup made from tinned mutton, boiled with vegetables and seasoned, thickened with a butter‑flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 9,057 recipes mention both. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Brown Soup From Tinned Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Turn the mutton out of the tin into 1 quart of boiling water and let it cool completely to remove the fat.

  2. Transfer the contents to a stew pan, add another quart of boiling water, and bring to a boil.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add the sliced vegetables, bouquet garni, and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Cook gently for 1 hour, then strain the mixture through a fine wire sieve.

Thicken and serve

  1. In a separate pan, heat the butter, add the flour, and cook gently until browned.

  2. Stir the puree and strained liquid back into the pan, bring to a boil, season to taste, and serve.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat flavour and richness to the broth.
Butter
Carries flavour and, with the flour, forms a roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter into a roux.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth as it cooks slowly in the broth.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the broth as it cooks.
Turnip
Adds earthy flavour and body to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and butter. Flour cooked in butter must be stirred over gentle heat until it reaches the intended colour. Undercooked roux leaves a raw floury taste, while overcooked roux loses thickening power and turns bitter.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, butter, flour):

  1. Leekbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  3. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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