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Lamb Soup

A hearty lamb soup with carrots, turnips, onion, herbs, peas, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lamb Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the loin of lamb into steaks.

  2. Place it in a stewpan with gravy or lean beef.

Make the soup

  1. Add chopped carrots, turnips, onion, sweet herbs, pepper, and salt.

  2. Pour in enough water to make good soup.

  3. Boil for three hours.

  4. Add peas long enough before serving to cook them.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lamb + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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

Lamb loin
Provides the main meat, releasing flavour and richness into the broth as it simmers.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they soften during long simmering.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and a tender texture after long cooking.
Onion
Builds savoury depth as its sugars and aromatics mellow in the simmering liquid.
Peas
Add sweetness, colour and a soft texture when cooked briefly at the end.

The step that matters

Add peas long enough before serving to cook them. Peas are small and cook quickly, so adding them too early turns them mushy and dull in colour. Adding them shortly before serving keeps them tender, bright and distinct in the soup.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, beef, carrot, turnip, onion, pepper):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, beef, carrot, turnip, onion, 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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