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Scotch Barley Soup

A hearty soup of meat and Scotch barley with vegetables, thickened with flour and butter, finished with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 Barley Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cover the meat with cold water in a large pot.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim off the foam, and add the Scotch barley and onions.

  3. Simmer gently for 2 hours, or cook in a covered stone pot in the oven.

  4. Skim off the fat, then add celery, turnips, carrots, and button onions.

  5. Cook until the meat is tender but not falling apart.

Finish the soup

  1. Remove the meat and keep warm.

  2. Strain 1 quart of broth, then thicken with flour and butter.

  3. Add port wine or catsup to the sauce and pour over the meat.

  4. For veal, mix broth with milk, thicken with flour and butter, and season with salt, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  5. Mix in beaten egg yolks with cream 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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 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. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + turniptop 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

Meat
Gives the broth its body and rich beefy or savory flavor as it simmers.
Scotch barley
Adds chewy texture and thickens the soup as its starch releases during simmering.
Flour
Thickens the strained broth into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup at the end, giving it a silky, creamy texture.
Port wine or catsup
Adds sweetness, acidity and depth of flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Mix in beaten egg yolks with cream before serving. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they meet very hot liquid directly. Tempering them with a little hot broth first, and keeping the soup below a simmer, keeps the finish smooth and thick.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, barley, celery, turnip, carrot, flour, butter):

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

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