Name: Broth of Beef, Mutton, and Fowl
Ingredients: 2 pounds lean beef; 2 pounds scrag of mutton; sweet herbs; 10 peppercorns; 5 quarts water

Why it works: Beef and mutton are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,373 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broth of Beef, Mutton, and Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Combine beef, mutton, sweet herbs, and peppercorns in a saucepan.
Add water and bring to a simmer.
Cook until the liquid reduces to 3 quarts.
Let cool and skim off the fat.

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.

Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,373 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef: Gives the broth its main meaty flavor and dissolves gelatin from connective tissue into the liquid.
Scrag of mutton: Adds rich, savory flavor and body from its bones and connective tissue.

“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.