Skip to main content
Main

Genuine Scotch Broth

A hearty soup of mutton, barley, and vegetables simmered together.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Genuine Scotch Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wipe the mutton and cut it into 1-inch cubes. Place in a kettle and cover with cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim, and add the soaked barley. Simmer for 1¼ hours until the meat is tender.

  3. In a second kettle, place the bones, cover with cold water, and heat slowly to boiling. Skim and boil for 1½ hours.

  4. Strain the water from the bones and add it to the meat mixture.

Add the vegetables and finish

  1. In a skillet, fry the diced carrot, turnip, onion, and celery in butter for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the fried vegetables to the soup with salt and pepper, cooking until the vegetables are soft.

  3. Thicken the soup by mixing 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of flour together, then add to the soup.

  4. Stir in the chopped parsley just before serving.

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 + 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. Barley + turniptop 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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat flavour and, as it simmers, gelatinous body to the broth.
Barley
Swells during simmering, adding body and a chewy texture to the soup.
Flour
Combined with butter to form a roux that thickens the soup.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour when frying the vegetables and enriches the thickening roux.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter thickener. Flour mixed with butter must be blended smoothly into the hot soup, or it clumps. Cooking the flour removes raw starch taste and lets the soup thicken evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipes