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Scotch Broth

A hearty mutton broth with root vegetables, barley, and boiled potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Scotch Broth

Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Scotch Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the carrots, turnips, onions, leeks, and celery into small pieces.

  2. Put the vegetables into a stewpan with 3 pints of water and 1 teacup of pearl barley.

  3. Boil until soft.

Cook the broth

  1. Add the mutton cutlets, pepper, salt, and extract of meat.

  2. Simmer until the meat is tender.

Serve

  1. Pour the broth into a tureen over the boiled potatoes.

  2. Scatter minced parsley on top and serve.

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 + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Leek + barleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 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 cutlets
Provide the meat that becomes tender during simmering and flavours the broth.
Pearl barley
Thickens the broth and adds body as its starch releases during simmering.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour, softening during the long simmer.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body as they soften in the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer until the meat is tender. Mutton cutlets need a long, gentle simmer rather than a hard boil; high heat toughens muscle proteins and can leave the meat stringy while the broth turns cloudy.

Swap the onion

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

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

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