Scotch Broth appears as a signature dish in 1 United Kingdom cities. See each city's local variant and where to eat it.
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.
Where to eat in Edinburgh:
- The Scran and Scallie
- Howies
- The Witchery by the Castle
- The Dome
- Fishers in the City