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Mutton Broth

A clear broth made by simmering mutton, onion, turnips, salt, and beaten grit in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Mutton Broth

Why it works: Onion and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Start the broth

  1. Place the mutton in a stew-pan and cover with cold water.

  2. When the water is warm, pour it off and add 4-5 pints of fresh water.

  3. Add salt, beaten grit, and onion.

  4. Set on low heat and skim off the scum.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add turnips and let it simmer for 2 hours.

  2. Strain through a clean sieve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

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

  3. Mutton + turniptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,558 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Meat and connective tissue release flavor and gelatin, giving the broth body as it simmers.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and mild sweetness as it cooks into the broth.
Turnips
Add gentle sweetness and an earthy flavor to the broth during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Set on low heat and skim off the scum. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear, while boiling hard breaks up the scum and fat into the liquid. Skimming removes coagulated proteins that would otherwise make the broth cloudy and murky.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Turnipthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion. 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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