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Barley Broth

A simple broth made with mutton or lamb, barley, vegetables, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and barley work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 510 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Barley Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cover the neck of mutton or lamb with 2 quarts of cold water.

  2. Add 1 teacup of crushed barley.

  3. Let it stand on the back of a hot range for 1 hour.

  4. Move it forward and add the desired vegetables.

  5. Simmer for 5 hours.

Finish the broth

  1. Cool overnight, then skim the broth.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt to taste.

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. Mutton + barleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together510 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of mutton or lamb
Provides meat and bones that release flavour and body into the broth as it simmers.
Crushed barley
Releases starch as it cooks, thickening the broth and giving it a soft, hearty texture.
Vegetables
Add aroma, sweetness and extra body to the broth during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Simmer for 5 hours. A long, gentle simmer below a rolling boil lets collagen and flavour leave the meat slowly, while the barley softens and thickens the liquid. Boiling hard can make the broth cloudy and greasy.

“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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