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Scotch Broth

A hearty soup of mutton, vegetables, barley, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Scotch Broth

Why it works: Turnip and carrot 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 Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton and vegetables into medium-sized dice.

Make the broth

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and brown the mutton.

  2. Stir in the flour and add the vegetables.

  3. Fill the saucepan with stock and hot water.

  4. Add the soaked barley and season with pepper and salt.

  5. Let it simmer for one hour.

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. Turnip + carrottop 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. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean mutton
Provides the meat and rich flavour, which browning in butter deepens.
Barley
Thickens the broth as its starch releases during simmering, giving body.
Butter
Carries the browning of the mutton and adds richness to the broth.
Flour
Lightly thickens the cooking liquid so it becomes less watery.
Turnip
Adds sweetness and bulk as it softens during the long simmer.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and colour as it softens during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Browning the mutton. Searing the meat in butter before adding liquid creates browned flavour compounds through the Maillard reaction. Pale, steamed meat gives a flatter, less savoury broth.

Swap the onion

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

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

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