Skip to main content
Main

Scotch Broth

A hearty soup made with barley, turnips, carrots, onions, peas, parsley, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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

Make the broth

  1. In a saucepan, combine 2 quarts of water and ¼ pound of washed pearl barley.

  2. Add the diced turnips, diced carrots, and sliced onions to the saucepan.

  3. Add the green peas and bring the mixture to a simmer.

  4. Let the broth simmer for 3 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Ten minutes before serving, stir in the chopped parsley, butter, and salt to taste.

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. Barley + turniptop 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

Pearl barley
Thickens the broth as its starch releases during long simmering, and adds chewy body.
Turnips
Add sweetness and firm texture that holds up through long simmering.
Carrots
Contribute sweetness and color while softening during the long simmer.
Onions
Build savory depth as they soften and sweeten in the broth.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished broth.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and parsley at the end. Butter and fresh herbs are best added off the long simmer. Prolonged boiling can dull the bright parsley flavor and cause the butter fat to separate, leaving the broth greasy rather than smooth.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, turnip, carrot, onion, parsley, 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.

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipes