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Scotch Broth

A hearty Scottish soup made with mutton, barley, root vegetables, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Scotch Broth

Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat from the bones, removing all fat, and cut it into small pieces.

Make the broth

  1. Put the meat into a soup pot with the turnip, carrot, onion, celery, barley, and cold water.

  2. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

  3. Place the bones in a separate pot with 1 quart of water, simmer for 2 hours, and strain the liquid into the soup pot.

Finish the soup

  1. In a small pan, cook the flour and butter together until smooth, then stir into the soup.

  2. Add the chopped parsley and season with salt and pepper.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Carrot + celerytop 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. Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 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

Mutton neck
Gives the broth its rich meaty flavour as it simmers down with the bones.
Barley
Releases starch as it cooks, thickening the broth and giving it body.
Flour
Cooked with butter, it thickens the soup further into a smooth, body-rich texture.
Butter
Carries the flour into the soup and adds richness to the finished broth.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and butter until smooth. Raw flour stirred straight into hot liquid clumps and tastes pasty. Cooking it in fat first coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly and thicken without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, turnip, carrot, celery, barley, flour, butter):

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

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