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Scotch Barley-broth

A hearty broth made with barley, mutton or beef, turnips, carrots, onions, parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 Barley-broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Heat 3 quarts of water until lukewarm.

  2. Add ¼ pound of barley.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Skim the broth before adding vegetables.

Add vegetables and simmer

  1. Add ½ bunch of quartered turnips, 2 scraped carrots, 1 chopped small carrot, a handful of chopped parsley, and 2-3 onions.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Simmer slowly for best results.

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 + 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 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

Barley
Swells as it cooks, thickening the broth and giving it a chewy texture.
Lean mutton neck or thin flank of beef
Adds meaty flavour and body to the broth as it simmers.
Turnips
Contribute a mild, slightly sweet flavour and soft texture as they cook.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour to the broth.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Skim the broth before adding vegetables. Skimming removes foam and loose fat that rise as the liquid heats, leaving a cleaner-tasting, clearer broth. Adding vegetables before skimming would trap that impurity around them.

Swap the onion

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

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

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