Skip to main content
Main

Scotch Barley Broth

A hearty barley broth made with fowl, beef, carrots, turnips, onions, and barley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Barley Broth

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, bring 2 gallons of cold water to a boil.

  2. Add 6 ounces of barley and skim the surface.

  3. Add the fowl and 1 pound of beef (or 3 pounds of beef without the fowl).

  4. Stir in 3 pounds of carrots, 3 pounds of turnips, and 3 finely chopped onions.

  5. If using greens, add them and 1 ounce more barley.

  6. Keep the pot boiling for 5 hours, skimming as needed.

  7. Remove the fowl when cooked and serve it with the broth.

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. Barley + turniptop 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. Barley + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together784 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 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

Barley
Thickens the broth as its starch releases during long simmering, giving body.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color to the broth as they soften over the long cook.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and soften into the broth during the long boil.
Onions
Build savory depth and aroma as they cook down into the broth.
Beef
Releases gelatin and flavor into the water, enriching the broth over long simmering.

The step that matters

Keep the pot boiling for 5 hours, skimming as needed. A steady boil over a long time breaks down collagen and draws out flavor, but skimming removes foam and impurities that would otherwise cloud the broth and taste off.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, beef, carrot, turnip):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, beef, carrot, turnip. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes