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Mutton and Broth, with Roots

A mutton broth simmered with onions, thyme, parsley, celery, turnips, carrots, button onions, and celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 and Broth, with Roots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Cut the neck of mutton into cutlets.

  2. Place the scrag and trimmings in a stewpan with onions, thyme, parsley, and celery trimmings.

  3. Add ½ cup of water and simmer without letting it catch.

  4. Add 2 quarts of water, skim, and keep it boiling slowly.

Add the vegetables

  1. Transfer the cutlets to a 4-quart soup pot.

  2. Add ½ cup of water, scooped turnips, carrots, button onions, and celery.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton neck
Gives the broth its rich meaty flavour as it simmers slowly.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth as they cook.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour to the finished broth.
Turnips
Add a mild, slightly sweet vegetable flavour and body to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer without letting it catch. Meat and onions can stick and scorch on the base of the pan if the heat is too high or they are left unstirred. Scorched bits taint the flavour of the whole broth, so keep the heat gentle and watch closely at the start.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, thyme, parsley, celery, turnip, carrot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, thyme, parsley, celery, turnip, carrot. 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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