Name: Mutton Broth for the Sick
Ingredients: 1 pound mutton chops from the loin; 1 quart cold water; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 turnip, peeled and sliced; 1 small onion, peeled and sliced

Why it works: Turnip and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Broth for the Sick

Ingredients

1 pound mutton chops from the loin
1 quart cold water
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
1 turnip, peeled and sliced
1 small onion, peeled and sliced

Directions

Prepare

Trim all the fat from the mutton chops.
Place the chops in a pot with 1 quart of cold water and ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt.
Simmer gently until it comes to a boil, then skim the surface.

Make the broth

Add the sliced turnip and onion, and let it simmer for 2 hours.
Strain the broth into a deep pan and let it cool.
Remove the layer of fat from the top and warm the broth as needed.

Serve

Serve the meat with the broth or on its own with some broth poured over it.

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.

Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,531 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Mutton + turniptop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,558 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton chops: Provide the meat and rich flavour that the broth is built on.
Turnip: Adds subtle sweetness and earthy flavour to the broth as it simmers.
Onion: Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the broth during simmering.

The step that matters

Skim the surface after the broth comes to a boil. Foam and impurities rise as the liquid heats. Skimming them early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting rather than cloudy or scummy.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion):

Leekfits better
Potatofits better
Turnipthe original
Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion. 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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Mutton Broth for the Sick