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Mutton Soup

A hearty soup made from a slow‑cooked leg of mutton, seasoned with salt, pepper, and summer savory, served with egg‑flour noodles.

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

Why it works: Summer savory and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 263 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mutton Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the leg of mutton for 2 to 3 hours.

  2. Season the broth with salt, pepper, and summer savory.

Make the noodles

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg until light.

  2. Add a pinch of salt and enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  3. Roll out the dough into a thin sheet and dredge with flour to prevent sticking.

  4. Roll the sheet tightly and slice it thinly, like cabbage for slaw.

Serve

  1. Add the noodles to the soup just 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.

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. Summer savory + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton
Provides the meat and rich flavour that the broth is built on.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure to the noodles.
Flour
Gives the dough its body so it can be rolled and sliced into noodles.

The step that matters

Add the noodles to the soup just before serving. Flour-based noodles keep absorbing liquid and soften the longer they sit in hot broth, so adding them at the last moment keeps their texture firm.

Swap the summer savory

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

  1. Turmericfits about as well
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Summer savorythe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, egg, flour. 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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