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Mutton Shank Jelly, or Soup

A gelatinous soup made from mutton shanks simmered with onion, herbs, and bread crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mutton Shank Jelly, or Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the mutton shanks well.

  2. Place them in a large pot with water, onion, salt, pepper, sweet herbs, and bread crust.

Cook and strain

  1. Simmer until the liquid is reduced by half, or place in a covered jug in the oven.

  2. Strain the soup and let it cool.

Finish

  1. Remove the fat from the top when cold before serving.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  4. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton shanks
Provide the meat and collagen that give the broth body and a jelly-like set when chilled.
Water
Extracts flavour and gelatin from the shanks as it simmers, forming the base liquid.
Bread crust
Adds a little body and helps clarify the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmering until the liquid is reduced by half. Long, gentle cooking draws collagen from the shanks into the liquid. Boiling hard can cloud the broth, and too little reduction leaves it too weak to set.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, 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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