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Bisque of Mutton

A creamy soup made from simmered mutton, onion, cloves, bay leaf, rice, and milk or thin cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Bisque of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and cut the mutton into pieces.

  2. Put the mutton in a kettle with 2 quarts of cold water and simmer gently for 2 hours.

  3. Add the onion, cloves, bay leaf, and rice. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Finish the bisque

  1. Strain the soup and press the rice through a sieve.

  2. Return the soup and rice to the kettle and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the milk or thin cream and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the meaty flavour and body of the broth as it simmers.
Rice
Thickens the soup as it cooks and is pressed through to give body.
Milk or thin cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Simmer the mutton gently. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear and lets collagen and flavour release slowly; a hard boil makes the liquid cloudy and greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, clove, rice, milk, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, clove, rice, milk, pepper. 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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