Name: Barley Soup
Ingredients: 8 pounds meat and bones; 6 pounds barley; 4 whole onions; 8 cloves; 2 cups minced carrots; 3 bay leaves; 1 cup salt; 1 red pepper pod; 7 gallons water

Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Barley Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

Combine meat, bones, and water in a large pot.
Bring to a boil.
Add onions, cloves, carrots, bay leaves, salt, and red pepper.
Simmer for several hours until the flavors meld and the meat is tender.

Finish and serve

Remove bones and strain the soup if desired.
Serve hot, portioning into half-pint cups.

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.

Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,873 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Barley + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together784 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 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

Barley: Thickens the soup and adds a chewy, starchy body as it cooks.
Meat and bones: Release flavor and gelatin into the broth, giving it depth and body.
Carrots: Add natural sweetness and aroma to the broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, barley, clove, carrot, pepper):

Leekfits better
Turnipfits better
Parsnipfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, barley, clove, carrot, 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.