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Scotch Soup

A hearty soup made with oats, potatoes, onions, and flour thickened with browned fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Scotch Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the water in a large pot.

  2. Add the rolled oats, potatoes, onions, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cook for 30 minutes.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a separate pan, brown the flour with the fat.

  2. Add the browned flour mixture to the soup and cook until thick.

  3. Stir in the tomato for added flavor, if desired.

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.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Rolled oats
Break down during cooking to give the soup body and a thick, hearty texture.
Potatoes
Soften as they cook, adding starch and body to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup once browned with fat and stirred in.
Onions
Soften and release sweetness as the soup simmers.

The step that matters

Add the browned flour mixture to the soup. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps; browning it with fat first coats the starch granules so they disperse smoothly and thicken evenly as the soup cooks.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, oats, flour, potato, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, oats, flour, potato, 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.

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