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Barley Soup

A hearty soup made with pearl barley, milk, water, pickled ham, chicken, eggs, bread crumbs, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Goff, May Perrin, [from old catalog] ed · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and barley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 198 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the barley and milk

  1. Place one teacup of pearl barley in about one pint of cold water.

  2. Bring to the boil until it swells.

  3. Boil in a tin pail in hot water, adding four quarts of milk.

  4. Keep simmering for three or four hours.

  5. Add one teaspoonful of salt when serving.

Cook the fowl and ham

  1. Cut two young fowls or one full-grown fowl into pieces.

  2. Put the fowl pieces into a pot with half a pound of pickled ham or pork and one quart of water, or enough water to cover them.

  3. Add one gallon of water to the pot.

  4. Stew for an hour, or until the breast meat can be easily cut.

  5. Remove the breasts, leaving the rest of the meat in the pot, and add the remaining water, bringing it to a boil.

  6. Stir the soup slowly while chopping up the breasts.

Make the meat balls and finish

  1. Rub the yolks of four hard-boiled eggs smooth, moistening them into a paste with a few spoonfuls of soup.

  2. Mix the egg paste with a handful of fine bread crumbs and the chopped meat, and form into small balls.

  3. When the soup has boiled for two and a half hours, if the chicken has been reduced to shreds, strain the meat and bones.

  4. Season the soup with salt, pepper, and a bunch of parsley.

  5. Drop the meat balls into the soup and boil for ten minutes, incorporating the ingredients thoroughly.

  6. Add one pint of rich milk thickened with a little flour, a little at a time.

  7. Boil once more and serve.

By Goff, May Perrin, [from old catalog] ed. 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. See the original page.

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. Bread + barleytop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together198 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

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

  3. Ham + breadtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Milk + breadtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,363 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together22,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Swells during boiling to thicken the soup and give it body.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess, and its proteins help give the soup a smooth body.
Fowl
Provides meat and flavour from the simmered bones and flesh that enrich the broth.
Pickled ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the broth as it simmers.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks bind with bread crumbs to hold the meat balls together.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the meat balls into shape.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk. Adding milk to a hot soup can curdle it, and flour added in small amounts stirred in gradually keeps the milk smooth. Keep the soup below a hard boil and add the milk slowly while stirring.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, ham, bread, barley, egg, pepper):

  1. Nutmegabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Celeryabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Thymeabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, ham, bread, barley, egg, pepper. 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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