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Mutton Soup a LA Cowley

A hearty mutton and beef broth with vegetables, barley, and browned vegetables, served with chops.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mutton Soup a LA Cowley

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Cut the spine from the rack of mutton, pare and shorten the ribs.

  2. Place the mutton, parings, and soup beef in a soup pot with salt and water.

  3. Bring to a boil and skim off the foam.

  4. Add carrots, turnips, onion with cloves, garlic, celery, and peppercorns.

  5. Cover and boil for 2 hours.

  6. Remove the rack and shoulder of mutton.

  7. Boil the remaining stock for 2 hours longer.

  8. Remove all fat.

  9. Strain the stock through a wet napkin.

Make the soup

  1. Cut the remaining carrots, turnips, and celery into small squares.

  2. Fry in butter until slightly brown.

  3. Add 3 quarts of broth to the vegetables.

  4. Boil for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Divide the rack into 8 or more chops.

  2. Warm in boiling broth.

  3. Place in a soup tureen with 1 pint of boiled and drained barley.

  4. Remove fat from the soup.

  5. Color with caramel.

  6. Pour over the chops.

  7. 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Gives the broth its rich, savory meat flavor and body as it simmers.
Soup beef
Adds gelatin and deep beefy flavor to the stock as it simmers for hours.
Barley
Swells as it cooks, adding starchy body and chewy texture to the soup.
Butter
Fat for frying the vegetables, adding richness and browning them for flavor.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aroma to the stock and the finished soup.

The step that matters

Remove all fat. Fat left in the stock turns the soup greasy and dulls its flavor. Skimming during the boil and after the stock is strained keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, beef, carrot, turnip, onion, garlic, celery. 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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