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Scotch Broth

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 mutton

  1. Remove the skin from the mutton and discard it.

  2. Cut the meat from the bones and remove all fat.

  3. Cut the lean meat into small pieces and place in a stew pan.

Make the broth

  1. Add 1 quart of water to the bones and simmer gently for 2 hours.

  2. In the stew pan, add 3 pints of water, pearl barley, carrot, turnip, celery, and onion.

  3. Cook very slowly for 3 hours.

  4. Add the strained water from the bones, salt, and pepper.

  5. Add a mixture of flour and butter that has been cooked until smooth.

  6. Cook for an additional 30 minutes.

  7. Stir in minced parsley and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat flavour, and its collagen and connective tissue enrich the broth as it simmers.
Pearl barley
Softens during long cooking and thickens the broth with its starch, giving body.
Onion
Builds savoury depth and sweetness as it cooks slowly into the broth.
Flour
Cooked with butter into a roux, it thickens the broth to a smooth, fuller texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and with flour forms the roux that thickens the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter mixture. If the flour and butter are not cooked smooth before being added, lumps form and the broth thickens unevenly. Cooking the roux first removes raw flour taste and lets it disperse evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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