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Slow Cooker Beef Barley Soup

"A slow cooker makes this the easiest recipe ever. It has become a regular family favorite. So much so, that I was requested to bring it to Christmas Eve dinner. I usually use leftover boneless beef short ribs."

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and barley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 458 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

The recipe

10 to 12 servings
Prep10 min
Cook8 hr

Ingredients

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Beef + barleytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, celery, carrot, onion, parsley, barley):

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Dillbetter flavor fit
  3. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, celery, carrot, onion, parsley, barley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).