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Scotch Mutton Broth

A broth made from mutton, vegetables, and rice or barley, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Scotch Mutton Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, cover the mutton with cold water and add a perforated lid to allow steam to escape.

  2. Cook the mutton until about halfway done, then add the carrots, turnip, onions, celery, mango, and red pepper.

  3. Continue cooking until the mutton is fully cooked.

  4. Remove the meat and strain out the vegetables.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the rice or pearl barley to the broth and cook until tender.

  2. Before serving, add a few sprigs of fresh parsley.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck mutton
Gives the broth its meaty flavour and rich body as it cooks down.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour to the broth as they soften.
Onions
Build savoury depth and sweetness in the broth during long cooking.
Rice or pearl barley
Thickens the broth slightly and adds body as the starch releases during cooking.

The step that matters

Cook the mutton until about halfway done before adding the vegetables. Mutton needs a long, gentle simmer to become tender and release its flavour. Adding vegetables too early can leave them overcooked and mushy by the time the meat is done.

Swap the mango

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, pepper, rice):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Mangothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, pepper, rice. 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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