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Scotch Barley Soup

A hearty soup made with beef or veal, Scotch barley, onions, celery, turnips, carrots, and optional button onions, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the broth

  1. Place the meat in a large pot and cover with cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim off any impurities, and add the Scotch barley and onions.

  3. Simmer gently for 2 hours, or cook in a covered stone pot in the oven at 300°F (150°C).

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

Finish the soup

  1. Continue cooking until the meat is tender but not falling apart.

  2. Remove the meat and keep warm.

  3. Strain a quart of the broth and use it to thicken the soup.

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

Scotch barley
Its starch swells and thickens the broth while its chewy grains give the soup body.
Meat
Its collagen and juices enrich the broth with savory flavor as it cooks.
Onions
They add sweetness and aroma to the broth as they cook down.
Turnips
They add mild sweetness and substance that soften during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Skimming the broth after boiling. Impurities and fat that rise to the surface can make the broth cloudy and greasy. Removing them early gives a clearer, cleaner-tasting soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

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