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Scotch Soup

A hearty mutton soup with barley or rice, onions, carrots, turnip, and a butter‑flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Scotch Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into small pieces and trim off the fat.

  2. Boil the bones in part of the water.

  3. Cook the meat in a separate kettle.

  4. Skim the surface carefully.

  5. Cut the vegetables into small pieces.

  6. If using barley, soak it in cold water for several hours.

Make the soup

  1. Once the scum ceases to rise, add the barley and vegetables.

  2. Let everything simmer gently for about 2 hours until the meat is thoroughly cooked.

  3. Smooth the butter with the flour and add it to the soup.

  4. Strain the soup and add the water from the boiled bones.

  5. Boil together for a few minutes.

  6. Season with pepper.

  7. Serve without straining.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + barleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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 body, becoming tender during a long gentle simmer.
Barley or rice
Releases starch as it cooks, thickening the broth and adding body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when smoothed with butter and stirred in.
Onion
Adds aromatic savoury flavour to the broth as it simmers.
Carrot
Adds mild sweetness and colour to the broth.

The step that matters

Skim the surface carefully. Scum that rises while the meat cooks contains impurities. If left in the broth it makes the soup cloudy and can taste bitter or muddy, so removing it keeps the broth clear and clean-flavoured.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, barley, egg, 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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