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Mutton Tea

A simple mutton stew made with barley, simmered for two hours and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and celery work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 571 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Mutton Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Trim all the fat from the mutton and cut it into small chops.

Simmer the soup

  1. Place the mutton in a stew pan and add the barley, water, and salt.

  2. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. When cold, remove all the fat.

  5. Add a small stick of celery for flavoring 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. Barley + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together571 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Mutton + barleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together510 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Mutton + celerytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together928 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Scrag end mutton
Provides the meat and rich flavour that the broth is built on.
Pearl barley
Releases starch during simmering, thickening the broth and giving it body.
Water
Forms the liquid base that extracts flavour from the meat and barley.

The step that matters

When cold, remove all the fat. Fat from the mutton floats on the broth and sets as it cools, so skimming it when cold removes most of it cleanly. Skimming while hot leaves greasy droplets that stay in the soup.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Celerythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Pepperfits less well
  4. Cuminfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, barley. 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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