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Soup

Cream of Barley

A veal and barley soup thickened with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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

  1. Trim the fat from the veal cutlet and cut the lean meat into small pieces.

Cook the soup

  1. Place the meat in a saucepan with cold water, add soaked barley and salt.

  2. Boil for two hours, then strain the liquid.

Finish the soup

  1. Pound the meat and barley together in a mortar, then sieve them, adding a little of the strained liquid.

  2. Stir in the cream.

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. Veal + barleytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Barley + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together301 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Veal + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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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