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Barley Soup

A soup made with barley, stock, salt, parsley, and white pepper, boiled and processed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 630 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Barley Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley

  1. Wash the barley in cold water.

  2. Drop the barley into 30 gallons of boiling water and cook slowly for about 1½ hours.

  3. Drain the barley.

Make the soup

  1. Place the stock in a kettle.

  2. Add the ground white pepper and the salt.

  3. Add the parsley in a bag or perforated spice box and bring to a boil.

  4. Add the drained barley and let it come to a boil again.

  5. Turn off the heat, remove the parsley and stir the kettle.

  6. Dip from the bottom into a 3 or 4-gallon pail for even distribution.

Can and process

  1. Fill into cans.

  2. Cap the cans.

  3. Tip the cans.

  4. Process the cans.

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. Barley + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together630 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + white peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Barley + white peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together29 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Barley
Provides the body and chewy texture of the soup as its starch softens during cooking.
Plain stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor and moisture of the soup.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma to the stock while it steeps and is removed before canning.
Ground white pepper
Adds a mild, sharp seasoning that gives the soup its background heat.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, parsley. 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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