Name: Barley Soup
Ingredients: 12 ounces barley; 5 ounces roast beef; 8 ounces potatoes; 4 ounces bread; 6 ounces corn-starch pudding

Why it works: Potato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 938 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Barley Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cook the barley in water until tender.
In a separate pot, roast the beef and cut it into small pieces.
Boil the potatoes until soft, then mash or cut into cubes.

Serve

Serve the barley soup with pieces of roast beef and potatoes.
Accompany with bread and corn‑starch pudding.

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.

Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together938 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Barley + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together165 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Barley + corntop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together128 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Barley + beeftop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together458 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,052 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).