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Scotch Barley Broth

A hearty broth made with Scotch barley, beef, onions, celery, and turnip, thickened with flour and optionally flavored with port wine or ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 145 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Scotch Barley Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash the Scotch Barley in cold water.

  2. In a soup pot, combine the barley and beef pieces, covering with cold water.

  3. Bring to a boil, skim off any foam, and add the onions.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer gently for 2 hours.

  5. Skim off the fat, then add the celery and turnip.

  6. Season with salt and boil for another 1.5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the meat and keep warm.

  2. Skim the broth before serving in a tureen.

  3. For the sauce, mix 1 quart of broth with 1 ounce of flour in a pan, stirring until smooth.

  4. Heat until boiling, then add optional wine or ketchup.

  5. Strain the sauce over the meat and garnish as desired.

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. Turnip + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Scotch barley
Thickens the broth as it cooks and gives it a chewy texture.
Beef shin or leg
Releases flavor and gelatin into the broth, enriching its body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it coats the meat.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and depth to the broth.
Celery
Adds savory, aromatic flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after the boil. A rolling boil makes the meat tough and cloudies the broth, so keep it at a gentle simmer for the full cooking time. Skimming foam and fat keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the capers

The recipe marks capers as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, beef, onion, celery, turnip, flour, port wine):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Capersthe original
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, beef, onion, celery, turnip, flour, port wine. 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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