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Scotch Broth

A hearty beef and barley soup with vegetables, simmered for hours and seasoned with coarse sea salt.

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

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Scotch Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine pot barley and 4 gallons of water in a large pot. Bring to a boil and cook for one hour.

  2. Add the beef, carrot, onion, cabbage, and turnip. Boil for two hours.

  3. Do not add any more water during the last hour of cooking.

Finish

  1. Season with coarse sea salt to taste.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Barley + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Releases flavour and gelatin into the broth as it simmers, giving body and richness.
Pot barley
Thickens the broth as its starch releases during long simmering, adding body and chew.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aroma to the broth as it softens during cooking.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the broth as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Do not add more water during the last hour. Adding cold water late drops the simmering temperature and dilutes the broth, weakening its flavour and slowing the final cooking of the barley and vegetables.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, barley, carrot, onion, turnip):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, barley, carrot, onion, turnip. 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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