Skip to main content
Main

Lamb Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 and simmer

  1. Cut the loin of lamb into steaks.

  2. Place the lamb in a stewpan with gravy or lean beef.

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

  4. Pour in enough water to make good soup and boil for three hours.

Finish

  1. 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, whose flavor and gelatin enrich the broth as it simmers.
Gravy or lean beef
Adds savory, meaty depth to the broth.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body to the soup as they soften.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and soft texture to the soup as they cook.
Peas
Add color and sweet, tender bite when cooked briefly before serving.

The step that matters

Add peas long enough before serving to cook them. Peas need enough time in the hot broth to become tender, but overcooking turns them dull and mushy. Adding them shortly before serving keeps them bright and tender-firm.

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.

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes