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Mutton-broth

A hearty mutton broth simmered with turnips, barley or rice, and flavored with pepper, onions, parsley, and thyme.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mutton-broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine the mutton, water, turnips, and pearl barley or rice in a large pot.

  2. Add a few grains of whole pepper and the fried onions.

  3. Bring to a gentle boil and simmer for 3 hours, skimming the surface regularly.

  4. Strain the broth from the vegetables.

  5. Mix in chopped parsley and thyme.

Serve

  1. Mash the turnips.

  2. Serve the turnips separately with parsley and butter or caper sauce.

  3. Serve the broth hot with bits of toasted 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,352 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

Mutton
Gives the broth its rich, meaty flavour as it simmers for hours.
Pearl barley or rice
Releases starch as it cooks, slightly thickening and body-building the broth.
Turnips
Soften during simmering, adding mild sweetness and body to the broth and mash.
Fried onions
Add browned, savoury sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the surface during the 3-hour simmer. Foam and fat rise to the surface as the meat cooks. Skimming them regularly keeps the broth clear and prevents a greasy, cloudy result. A gentle simmer, not a rolling boil, does the same job by keeping the fat and impurities from emulsifying into the liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, turnip, barley, pepper, parsley, thyme, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, turnip, barley, pepper, parsley, thyme, butter. 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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