Skip to main content
Main

Scotch Broth

A hearty soup made with barley, beans or potatoes, corn, onions, turnip, carrot, and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Scotch Broth

Why it works: Turnip and carrot 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

Prepare the barley

  1. Soak the barley overnight in 3 quarts of water.

  2. Simmer the soaked barley for 1 hour.

Make the broth

  1. Heat the oil in a pot, add chopped vegetables, and cook for 2 minutes.

  2. Add the cooked vegetables to the barley and slowly cook until both the vegetables and barley are tender.

  3. Adjust seasoning with more salt and pepper if necessary.

  4. If the broth is too thick, add more water.

  5. For added flavor, stir in 1 tablespoon of peanut butter or Vegex.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Barley + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together106 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 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
Provides the main body and chewy texture as it softens and releases starch into the broth.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften in the hot oil.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and color, and becomes tender during the slow simmer.
Turnip
Adds a mild, slightly peppery flavor and firm texture that softens with cooking.

The step that matters

Simmer the barley until tender. Barley needs a long, gentle simmer to soften fully. Adding the vegetables too early or cooking too hard can leave the grains chewy or break up the texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, beans, corn, turnip, carrot, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, beans, corn, turnip, carrot, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Corn SoupCream of Corn Soup50 recipesGreen Corn SoupGreen Corn Soup46 recipes