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Veal or Mutton Broth

A clear broth made from mutton or veal, water, barley or rice, salt, and optional vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Veal or Mutton Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the mutton in a saucepan with cold water and pearl barley or rice.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim well, and add salt.

  3. Boil until reduced by half, then strain and remove fat.

Add vegetables and serve

  1. If using vegetables, shred and add turnip, carrot, and onion; boil in broth for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve the broth with barley and vegetables if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Barley + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Scrag-end of mutton
Releases meat flavour and gelatin into the water, giving the broth body and savour.
Pearl barley or rice
Releases starch as it cooks, thickening the broth and adding body.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and earthy flavour to the broth.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and colour to the broth.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Skim well after the boil begins. Foam and fat rising from the meat would cloud the broth and taste greasy, so removing them early keeps the liquid clear and clean-flavoured.

Swap the turnip

The recipe marks turnip as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, barley, carrot, onion):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Turnipthe original
  3. Potatofits less well
  4. Parsnipfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, barley, carrot, 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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