IllustrationWhy it works: Barley and cream work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and 301 recipes mention both. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: egg, milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
Prepare
Mash one cup of barley well.
Combine the mashed barley with three pints of chicken or veal stock, one onion, and a bit of mace.
Cook the mixture slowly for five hours.
Rub the cooked mixture through a sieve.
Finish the soup
Add one and one-half pints of boiling cream or milk, salt, and cayenne to taste.
Beat the yolks of three eggs with one-fourth cup of cream.
Add the egg-cream mixture to the soup two minutes before serving.
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. See the original page.
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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.
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Barley + creamtop 14% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together301 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
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Chicken + oniontop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together17,808 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
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Barley + chickentop 6% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together265 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Barley + oniontop 7% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together1,166 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Cream + oniontop 9% of all pairsAroma overlaplowMentioned together10,826 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Cream and onion share little aroma chemistry, yet 10,826 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Barley
- Thickens the soup as it cooks down and gives it a body.
- Eggs
- Yolks enrich the soup and thicken it slightly when added at the end.
- Cream
- Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture.
The step that matters
Adding the egg-cream mixture. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the soup is too hot or boiling when they go in. Add the mixture off the boil, stirring, so the yolks thicken the soup smoothly.
Flavor stand-ins for the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, chicken, cream, egg):
- Potatobetter flavor fit
- Asparagusbetter flavor fit
- Leekbetter flavor fit
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against barley, chicken, cream, egg. 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).
“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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