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Scotch Broth

A hearty Scottish soup made with mutton, barley, vegetables, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Scotch Broth

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Scotch Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the meat from the bone, remove all fat, and cut into small pieces.

Make the broth

  1. Place the meat in a soup pot with turnip, carrots, onion, parsley, barley, and 3 pints of water.

  2. Boil gently for 2 hours.

  3. In a separate pot, boil the bones with 1 pint of water for 2 hours, then strain into the soup.

Thicken and season

  1. Cook flour and butter together until smooth, then stir into the soup.

  2. Add chopped parsley and season with salt and pepper.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of mutton
Provides the meat and rich flavour that the broth is built on.
Barley
Releases starch as it simmers, giving the broth body and a thicker texture.
Flour
Cooked with butter into a roux, it thickens the broth.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries flour's thickening when cooked together.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they soften during simmering.

The step that matters

Cook flour and butter together until smooth. Flour added directly to liquid clumps. Cooking it with butter first coats the starch grains so they disperse evenly and thicken the broth smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, turnip, carrot, parsley, barley, flour, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, turnip, carrot, parsley, barley, flour, butter. 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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