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Scotch Broth

A hearty mutton soup with barley, turnip, carrot, onion, celery, and parsley.

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 the meat

  1. Cut the meat from the bones and remove all the fat. Cut the meat into small pieces.

Make the broth

  1. In a soup pot, combine the meat, turnip, carrot, onion, celery, barley, and cold water.

  2. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

  3. Place the bones in a separate pot with 1 pint of water and simmer for 2 hours.

  4. Strain the broth from the bones 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

Neck of mutton
Provides the meat and the rich flavour that the broth is built on.
Barley
Thickens the broth as it cooks and adds a chewy texture.
Flour
Thickens the broth when cooked with butter and stirred in.
Butter
Cooked with the flour to make a smooth thickening paste.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the soup. Cooking the flour and butter together first cooks out its raw taste, and stirring it in smooth keeps lumps from forming when it thickens the broth.

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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