Skip to main content
Main

Scotch Barley Broth

A broth made from beef, water, carrot, and bread crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,606 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Scotch Barley Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the leg of beef into pieces.

Simmer and strain

  1. Boil the beef in 3 gallons of water with the carrot and crust of bread.

  2. Cook until the liquid is reduced by half.

  3. Strain 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. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Carrot + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of beef
Releases flavor and gelatin into the broth as it simmers, giving body and richness.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Cook until the liquid is reduced by half. Reducing concentrates flavor as water evaporates, so the broth tastes stronger. Checking the volume rather than the clock keeps the result from becoming too salty or intense, and too little reduction leaves it weak.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Onionfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes