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Soup

Scotch Broth

A hearty soup made with mutton, vegetables, barley, 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 it into small pieces.

Make the broth

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

  2. Boil gently for 2 hours.

  3. Place the bones in 1 pint of water, boil for 2 hours, then strain into the soup.

Finish the soup

  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

Mutton neck
Provides the main meat flavour and body as it simmers into the broth.
Barley
Releases starch as it cooks, thickening the broth and adding body.
Flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the soup smoothly.
Turnip
Adds a mild, slightly sweet vegetable flavour to the broth.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and colour to the broth.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and butter until smooth. Flour stirred in raw or added in lumps will not thicken evenly. Cooking it with butter first coats the starch grains so they disperse smoothly when stirred into the hot soup.

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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