Why it works: Veal and barley work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 162 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓
Cream of Barley
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the meat
Trim the fat from the veal cutlet and cut the lean meat into small pieces.
Cook the soup
Place the meat in a saucepan with cold water, add soaked barley and salt.
Boil for two hours, then strain the liquid.
Finish the soup
Pound the meat and barley together in a mortar, then sieve them, adding a little of the strained liquid.
Stir in the cream.
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.
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Veal + barleytop 23% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together162 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Barley + creamtop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together301 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
-
Veal + creamtop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,202 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Veal cutlet
- Provides the meat flavour and body that the soup is built on.
- Barley
- Thickens the liquid and gives the soup its body once pounded and sieved.
- Cream
- Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture at the end.
The step that matters
Pound the meat and barley, then sieve. Pounding breaks the cooked meat and barley into fine particles, and sieving removes the coarse pieces. Together they give the soup a smooth, thickened texture rather than a grainy one.
“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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