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Scotch Barley Soup

A hearty barley soup made with beef, veal or mutton, onions, celery, turnips, carrots, and optional vegetables, thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 Barley Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cover the meat with cold water in a two-gallon pot.

  2. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

  3. Add the Scotch barley and onions, then simmer for 2 hours.

  4. Skim off the fat, then add celery, turnips, carrots, and button onions.

  5. Cook until the meat is tender but not falling apart.

  6. Remove the meat and keep it warm.

Thicken and finish

  1. Strain 1 quart of broth and thicken it with flour and butter.

  2. Add port wine or catsup to the sauce and pour it over the meat.

  3. For veal, use a mixture of broth and milk, thickened with flour and butter, seasoned with salt, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  4. Mix in beaten egg yolks before serving.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Meat
Gives the broth its body and rich flavour as it simmers for hours.
Scotch barley
Softens as it cooks and thickens the soup with starch.
Flour
Thickens the strained broth into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the finished sauce, adding richness and a silkier texture.
Port wine or catsup
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, so if the sauce is too hot they can scramble and turn grainy. Stir them in gently off the heat or over low heat.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, barley, celery, turnip, carrot, flour, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, barley, celery, turnip, carrot, flour, butter. 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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