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Crowdy

A soup made from mutton broth, oatmeal, onions, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Crowdy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Stir the oatmeal into a smooth paste with some of the mutton broth.

  2. Add the remaining broth, chopped onions, pepper, and salt.

  3. Bring to a boil and cook for 20 minutes, stirring frequently.

Serve

  1. Serve with bread or toast sippets.

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

Oatmeal
Thickens the broth as it cooks, giving the soup body and a creamy texture.
Mutton broth
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavor of the soup.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma as they soften in the broth.

The step that matters

Stirring the oatmeal into a smooth paste first. Oatmeal added straight to hot liquid tends to clump, and starch grains that are not first dispersed in cold liquid form lumps that are hard to smooth out. Mixing it with some cold broth beforehand lets the starch hydrate evenly before the rest of the broth is added.

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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