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Scotch Broth

A hearty barley soup with carrots, turnips, onions, parsley, butter, and milk.

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 parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Scotch Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the water in a large pot and bring it to a boil.

  2. Add the pearl barley and let it gently simmer.

  3. Dice the carrots, turnips, and onions.

  4. In a frying pan, melt the butter and carefully fry the diced vegetables without browning them.

  5. Chop the parsley finely and add all the vegetables to the pot with the barley and water.

Simmer and serve

  1. Let the mixture simmer gently for two hours.

  2. Before serving, add pepper and salt to taste.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 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

Pearl barley
Swells as it simmers, thickening the broth and giving it body.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour from the vegetables and softens them gently without browning.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth as they soften.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour to the broth as they cook.
Turnips
Add a mild, slightly peppery flavour and soft texture to the broth.

The step that matters

Fry the vegetables without browning them. Browning would add bitter, roasted flavours and change the clean, pale character of the broth. Gentle heat softens the vegetables while keeping their sweetness.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, carrot, turnip, parsley, butter, pepper, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, carrot, turnip, parsley, butter, pepper, milk. 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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