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Crowdie or Scotch Broth

A Scottish broth made with meat stock, oatmeal, onions, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Crowdie or Scotch Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all fat from the meat broth and pour it into a saucepan.

  2. Place the saucepan on the stove and bring to a boil.

  3. In a bowl, mix the oatmeal with about ½ cup of the broth to form a smooth paste.

  4. Peel and finely chop the onions.

  5. Stir the chopped onions into the oatmeal paste and season with salt and pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. Once the broth is boiling, gradually stir in the oatmeal mixture.

  2. Let it boil for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent lumps.

  3. Serve in a soup tureen or basin.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal
Thickens the broth as its starch swells during boiling, giving the soup body.
Meat broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and release their flavour into the broth.

The step that matters

Gradually stirring the oatmeal into the boiling broth. Oatmeal starch clumps when it hits hot liquid unevenly. Pre-mixing it into a smooth paste and adding it slowly while stirring disperses the starch so it thickens evenly without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, 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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