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Scotch Soup

A hearty Scottish soup made with bone stock, lean beef, vegetables, oatmeal, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Remove the fat from the bone.

  2. Place the fat in a pot with the water.

  3. Add the carrot, turnip, celery, and one onion.

  4. Boil for 3 hours.

  5. Strain to make stock.

Make the soup

  1. Heat a little dripping in a soup pot.

  2. Cut the meat into small squares.

  3. Finely chop the other onion.

  4. Fry the meat and onion in the dripping until browned.

  5. Add the stock to the pot.

  6. Bring to a boil.

  7. Gradually stir in the oatmeal.

  8. Add 2 teaspoons of salt and a little pepper.

  9. Let it boil for 45 minutes.

  10. 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.

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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  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

Beef
Provides the main body and savoury meaty flavour as it browns and simmers into the soup.
Oatmeal
Thickens the broth as its starch swells during boiling, giving the soup body.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and brown in the dripping.
Bone
Releases flavour and gelatin into the water during the long simmer, enriching the stock.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the oatmeal. Adding oatmeal all at once can clump and form lumps as it hits hot liquid. Stirring it in slowly keeps the starch dispersed so it thickens evenly as it swells.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, celery, 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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