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Mutton Broth

A clear broth made from mutton bones, vegetables, and parsley, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Prepare

  1. Pick, wash, and finely chop the parsley.

  2. Bring water to a boil in a saucepan and add a little coarse sea salt.

  3. Add the chopped parsley to the boiling water and simmer for 1 minute.

Make the broth

  1. Remove the meat from the mutton bones and chop it.

  2. Add the chopped meat to a pot with freshly boiled carrot, turnip, and onions.

  3. Pour in some of the broth and season it.

  4. Thicken the mixture with flour and gently simmer for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with caper sauce if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Scrags of mutton
Provides the meat and rich, savoury flavour that gives the broth its body.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma to the broth.
Carrot
Contributes gentle sweetness and colour to the broth.
Turnip
Adds mild, earthy flavour and substance to the broth.
Onions
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as they soften in the broth.
Flour
Thickens the broth as its starch swells with gentle heat.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour and gently simmer for 30 minutes. Flour starch only thickens fully when heated, and it can clump if added unevenly. Stirring it into the liquid and simmering gently lets the starch swell evenly and cook out its raw taste.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, parsley, carrot, turnip, flour, sauce. 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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