Scotch broth
Photo: bnhsu · CC BY-SA 2.0

Scotch broth is a signature dish of United Kingdom; we have verified places to eat it in Edinburgh. A clear-tasting lamb-and-barley soup with leek, carrot, turnip and split peas, simmered for hours. Start with where to eat Scotch broth in Edinburgh.

Scotch broth · Edinburgh

A clear-tasting lamb-and-barley soup with leek, carrot, turnip and split peas, simmered for hours. Edinburgh's standard winter starter and the soup of every household kitchen.

Scotch broth has been on Scottish kitchen tables since the Middle Ages, originally as a peasant pot-meal of mutton bones, barley and whatever root vegetable was in the larder. Samuel Johnson ate it in Edinburgh in 1773 and pronounced it good; James Boswell teased him for the conversion. The barley-and-lamb version became the standard restaurant offering through the Victorian hotel kitchens. The Edinburgh bistro version today uses a long-simmered lamb-bone stock, pearl barley swelled in the pot, and the vegetable cut diced rather than peasant-rough.

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