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Mutton-Broth

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 mutton in two and boil it in a gallon of water, skimming well.

  2. Add the bundle of sweet herbs, onion, and crust of bread; let it boil for an hour.

  3. Optionally add barley or rice at the beginning.

Finish and season

  1. Add the other part of the mutton, turnips, dried marigolds, chives, and parsley about 15 minutes before it's done.

  2. Season with salt.

  3. Thicken with oatmeal or bread if desired.

  4. Season with mace instead of sweet herbs and onion if preferred.

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. 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

Neck of mutton
Provides the meat and rich, savoury flavour that the broth is built on.
Barley or rice
Optional; releases starch that gives the broth more body as it simmers.
Oatmeal or bread
Optional; starch that thickens the broth when stirred in.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and a little earthy body to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the mutton broth. Meat releases foam and impurities as it first heats. Skimming them off early keeps the broth clear and stops it tasting muddy or greasy.

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.

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