Skip to main content
Main

Lamb Soup

A hearty soup made with lamb, water, salt, pepper, rice, potatoes, turnip, and macaroni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 851 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Lamb Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, combine lamb and water.

  2. Add salt and pepper, then cook for one hour.

  3. Stir in the rice and cook for an additional 10 minutes.

  4. Add potatoes, turnip, and macaroni if desired, and cook until tender.

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. Rice + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Potato + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Rice + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Lamb + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together520 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Provides the main meat flavor and richness that the broth carries.
Rice
Thickens the broth slightly as its starch releases during simmering.
Potatoes
Add starch and body, softening into the broth as they cook.
Macaroni
Adds bulk and chew, absorbing some broth as it cooks.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, rice, potato):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, rice, potato. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipes