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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

Make the broth

  1. Combine the mutton and 3 pints of boiling water in a vessel.

  2. Simmer for 2 hours.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the sliced carrots, turnips, and onions in 1 quart of water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the vegetables.

Finish the broth

  1. Add the strained vegetables to the mutton broth.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt.

  3. 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
Provides the main meaty flavor, and long simmering draws collagen out to give the broth body.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Turnips
Add earthy flavor and a mild sweetness as they cook.
Onions
Contribute savory aroma and depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 4 hours. Keeping the broth at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil keeps it clear, because vigorous boiling breaks up fat and proteins into the liquid, making it cloudy and greasy. A slow simmer still extracts flavor and body from the mutton over the long cooking time.

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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