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Mutton or Lamb Broth

A hearty broth made from mutton or lamb, rice, egg, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mutton or Lamb Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the unsalted meat in a covered pot with 1 gallon of water for 2 hours over low heat.

  2. Soak the rice in warm water to cover it, then add it to the boiling soup along with the soaking water.

  3. Cook for an additional hour, stirring occasionally to prevent the rice from sticking.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg until frothy and mix it with the cold milk and flour until smooth.

  2. Gradually add some of the hot broth to the egg mixture to temper it, then pour it into the pot after removing the meat.

  3. Season with parsley, thyme, pepper, and salt, then bring to a boil and serve.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton or lamb
Breaks down during long simmering to give the broth its meaty flavor and body.
Rice
Releases starch as it cooks, thickening the broth and adding body.
Egg
Thickens the broth when tempered and heated, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Milk
Adds richness and softness, and its proteins help make the enriched broth smooth.
Flour
Starch that helps thicken the egg and milk mixture so it blends smoothly into the broth.

The step that matters

Tempering the egg mixture. Adding hot broth slowly raises the egg's temperature gradually. Pouring it straight in can scramble the egg and leave lumps instead of a smooth, thickened broth.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, rice, egg, milk, parsley, 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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