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Soup

Middle Diet

A simple soup of bread, potatoes, meat or fish, milk, barley, beef tea, served with beer.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and barley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 165 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Middle Diet

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine 8 oz. of bread and 4 oz. of potatoes in a pot.

  2. Add 4 oz. of meat or 6 oz. of white fish.

  3. Pour in 1 pint of milk and cook until heated through.

  4. For soup, use 1½ oz. of barley and 1 pint of beef tea instead.

  5. Serve with ½ pint of beer.

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. Potato + barleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Barley + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Potato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Barley + teatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together49 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the bulk of the dish and soaks up liquid, giving it body.
Potatoes
Add starch that thickens the mixture and gives it a soft, substantial texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the bread and potatoes as it heats.
Barley
Adds starch and a chewy texture when used in the soup version.

“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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