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Scotch Broth

A hearty mutton broth with turnip, carrot, onion, celery, and a flour‑butter roux, seasoned with parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Make the broth

  1. Cut the mutton into small pieces and place in a soup pot with 2 quarts of water.

  2. Add the chopped turnip, carrots, onion, and celery.

  3. Simmer for two hours.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a separate pan, cook the flour and butter together until smooth.

  2. Stir the flour mixture into the soup.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

Scraggy neck of mutton
Provides the meat and bones that flavour the broth as they simmer.
Turnip
Adds subtle sweetness and body to the broth as it softens during simmering.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and colour to the broth.
Flour
Thickens the broth when cooked with butter and stirred in.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the flour thicken smoothly.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and butter until smooth. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps. Cooking it first in butter coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly and thicken the broth without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

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

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