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Mutton Broth

A clear broth made from mutton, carrots, turnips, onions, and water, seasoned with coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Mutton Broth

Why it works: Carrot and turnip 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 ↓

Mutton Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Remove the fat from the mutton and place the lean meat in a pot.

  2. Add 3 pints of boiling water and simmer for 2 hours.

Cook the vegetables

  1. In a separate pot, boil the sliced carrots, turnips, and onions in 1 quart of water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the vegetables and add them to the mutton broth.

Finish the broth

  1. Season with coarse sea salt and simmer slowly for 4 hours.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Mutton + carrottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,878 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Lean meat releases flavour and gelatin into the water as it simmers, giving the broth body.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aroma as they soften in the broth.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and soften into the broth, adding body and flavour.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma to the broth as they cook down.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly after adding the salt. Gentle simmering over a long time lets the meat's collagen break down into gelatin, giving body, while a rolling boil can make the broth cloudy and the meat tough.

Swap the onion

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

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

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