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A Quick-made Broth

A simple broth made from mutton bones, water, thyme, parsley, and optional onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

A Quick-made Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the fat and skin from the mutton bones.

  2. Cut the meat into thin pieces and place it in a small saucepan with the water.

  3. Add thyme, parsley, and onion if desired.

Simmer

  1. Bring to a rapid boil and skim off any foam.

  2. Cover the saucepan and simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Adjust the cover if the broth seems too weak.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Mutton + parsleytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,915 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

Mutton bones
Release flavour and gelatin into the water as they simmer, giving the broth body.
Water
Acts as the cooking liquid that extracts flavour from the meat and bones.
Thyme
Adds a herbal, savoury aroma to the broth.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, green aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Skim off the foam after the boil. Foam carries impurities and proteins from the meat that can cloud the broth and taint its flavour. Removing it early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, thyme, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, thyme, parsley. 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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