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Onion Soup

A hearty soup made with mutton, onions, carrots, and turnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the leg or neck of mutton in water for 2 hours.

  2. Add the chopped carrots, turnips, and shank bone, and simmer for another 2 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the broth over the sliced and lightly fried onions.

  2. Simmer the mixture for 3 hours, skimming off any fat.

  3. Serve with a roll or fried bread.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 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
Releases meat flavor and gelatin into the broth as it simmers for a long time.
Onions
Provide the sweetness and savory depth that form the body of the soup.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and earthy flavor to the broth.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and earthy flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming off the fat during the final simmer. Fat rises to the surface of a long-simmered broth and, if left in, makes the soup greasy and heavy on the palate. Skimming as it simmers keeps the broth clean-tasting.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, bread. 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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