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Scotch Barley Soup

A hearty barley soup made with beef or veal, vegetables, and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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. Cover the meat with cold water in a two-gallon pot.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim the surface, 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.

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

  6. Remove the meat and keep it warm.

Make the sauce

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

  2. Add port wine or catsup for flavor, and pour over the meat.

  3. For veal, mix broth and new milk, thicken with flour and butter, and season with salt, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  4. Stir in beaten egg yolks and cream near the fire without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce over the meat and the broth in a tureen.

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 soup its rich beefy or veal flavor and tender body as it simmers.
Scotch barley
Swells during simmering, thickening the broth and giving it a chewy texture.
Flour
Thickens the strained broth into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce gently, adding richness and body when heated without boiling.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the sauce, softening its flavor.

The step that matters

Stir in egg yolks and cream without boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the sauce boils, the proteins scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy, separated sauce.

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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