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Scotch Broth

A hearty mutton soup with barley, carrots, turnip, celery, and onion, finished with a butter‑flour roux and parsley.

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 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

Make the broth

  1. In a soup kettle, combine the meat, carrots, turnip, celery, onion, barley, and water.

  2. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

  3. Simmer the bones with 1 pint of water for the same time, then strain into the soup kettle.

  4. In a separate pan, cook the butter and flour together until smooth, then stir into the broth.

  5. Add salt, pepper, and chopped parsley.

  6. Cook slowly to keep the meat tender and enhance the broth's flavor.

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 + 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. 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

Mutton neck
Its meat and bones release flavor and gelatin into the broth as it simmers.
Barley
Swells during simmering, thickening the broth and adding body.
Butter and flour
Cooked together into a roux, they thicken the broth smoothly.
Carrots
Soften during simmering and add sweetness and body to the broth.
Onion
Softens and adds savory sweetness to the broth.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the broth. Cooking the butter and flour until smooth makes a roux; adding it without this step can leave lumps, and stirring it in fully lets it thicken the broth evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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