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Cottage Soup

A hearty soup made with mutton, rice, carrots, turnips, leeks, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cottage Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, heat the dripping and add the mutton, rice, carrot, turnip, and leeks, then stir everything together for about 5 minutes.

  2. Add the sugar, salt, and 2 quarts of water.

  3. Cover the pot and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for over an hour.

  4. Season with pepper and additional salt to taste 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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Rice + leektop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together161 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of mutton
Gives the soup its meaty flavour and richness as it simmers.
Rice
Thickens the broth as its starch releases during simmering.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like sweetness and body to the broth.
Turnip
Adds earthy sweetness and softens into the soup as it cooks.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and colour to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmering the soup. The soup needs to simmer gently for over an hour so the tough mutton becomes tender and its flavour spreads into the broth. A hard boil can toughen the meat and cloud the liquid.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, rice, turnip, leek, sugar, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits about as well
  2. Carrotthe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, rice, turnip, leek, sugar, pepper. 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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