Skip to main content
Main

Mutton Broth

A hearty broth made from mutton neck, water, herbs, onion, bread, turnips, and optional barley or rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Mutton Broth

Why it works: Turnip and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 109 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cut the neck of mutton in half and boil the scrag in 1 gallon of water.

  2. Skim the broth well and add the bundle of sweet herbs, onion, and crust of bread.

  3. Let it boil for 1 hour.

  4. Add the other part of the mutton, turnips, dried marigolds, chives, and parsley 15 minutes before the broth is done.

  5. Season with salt.

Finish and thicken

  1. Optionally add barley or rice at the beginning.

  2. Use oatmeal or additional bread to thicken the broth.

  3. Optionally season with mace instead of sweet herbs and onion.

  4. If boiling turnips for sauce, do not boil them in the broth to avoid overpowering the flavor.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Turnip + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton neck
Provides the meat and fat that give the broth its rich, savoury body.
Sweet herbs
Add aromatic flavour to the broth as it simmers.
Oatmeal or bread
Thickens the broth, adding body and a fuller mouthfeel.
Barley or rice
Adds starch that thickens the broth and adds body.

The step that matters

Skimming the broth. Skimming removes the foam and loose fat that rise as the meat cooks. Removing them early keeps the broth clear and stops it tasting greasy or muddy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, bread, turnip, chive, parsley, barley. 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.

More mutton broth recipes

Scotch 33with Chops 5Jelly 3with Roots 3 See all 391 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipes