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Scotch Broth Without Meat

A hearty soup of barley, oatmeal, root vegetables, and bread, simmered in boiling water and seasoned with salt, pepper, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Scotch Broth Without Meat

makes 2 quarts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the pearl barley overnight in cold water and rinse well.

  2. Peel and dice the turnip, carrot, and onion into ¼ inch pieces.

  3. Chop the celery into small bits.

Make the soup

  1. Combine all ingredients in a soup kettle with boiling water, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

  2. Simmer slowly for 1 hour.

  3. Mix the oatmeal with cold water to form a smooth batter and add it to the soup.

  4. Simmer for another hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Fry the diced bread in hot drippings until brown, then drain on paper.

  2. Add boiling water to the soup to make 2 quarts, adjust seasoning, 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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

Pearl barley
Softens during long simmering and thickens the broth with its starch.
Oatmeal
Mixed into a smooth batter, it thickens the broth and gives it body.
Turnip
Adds subtle sweetness and bulk as it cooks down into the soup.
Carrot
Contributes sweetness and color while softening into the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the oatmeal batter. Oatmeal mixed with cold water must be smooth before it goes into the hot soup, otherwise it clumps. Stirring it in gradually lets the starch disperse and thicken the broth evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, barley, pepper, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, barley, pepper, bread. 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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