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Scotch Broth

A hearty mutton soup with turnip, carrots, onion, celery, barley, and a butter‑flour roux.

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 broth

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

  2. Put the meat into a soup pot with the turnip, carrots, onion, celery, and pearled barley.

  3. Add 3 to 4 quarts of water and boil gently for 2 hours.

  4. In a separate pot, boil the bones with 1 quart of water for the same time, then drain into the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Cook the flour and butter together until smooth, then stir into the soup with the chopped parsley.

  2. Season with salt and pepper and serve at once.

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 meat
Supplies the main meaty flavour as it simmers slowly in the water.
Pearled barley
Thickens the broth as its starch releases during long simmering, and adds body.
Flour
Cooked with butter and stirred in, it thickens the broth to a smoother body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and binds with the flour for thickening.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour to the broth as they soften.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and butter until smooth. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps. Cooking it with butter first makes a roux that disperses evenly and thickens the soup 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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