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Scotch Broth

A hearty soup of mutton, barley, carrots, turnips, onions, celery, and butter simmered for hours.

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

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 ↓

Scotch Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the barley overnight.

  2. Remove the fat and skin from the mutton.

  3. Cut the mutton into small pieces.

Start the broth

  1. Boil the bones in 1 pint of cold water.

  2. Boil the meat in 3 pints of cold water.

  3. Once boiling, add the soaked barley.

Add the vegetables

  1. Dice the carrots, turnip, onion, and celery.

  2. Fry the diced vegetables in 2 tablespoons of butter for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the fried vegetables to the meat.

Simmer and finish

  1. Cook slowly for 4 hours.

  2. Strain the bones from the water.

  3. Add the liquid to the meat along with the salt and pepper.

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

Mutton
Its connective tissue breaks down during slow cooking, enriching the broth and softening the meat.
Barley
Its starch swells and releases into the liquid, thickening the broth and giving it body.
Butter
Fat frying the vegetables carries flavor and adds richness to the finished broth.
Onion
Softened in butter, it adds sweetness and savory aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for 4 hours. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear and lets the mutton's connective tissue break down into tender meat. Boiling hard toughens the meat and cloudies the liquid.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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