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Cream of Barley Soup

A creamy barley soup made with stock, onion, mace, cream, egg yolks, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Cream of Barley Soup

Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Cream of Barley Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the mashed barley, stock, onion, and mace.

  2. Cook slowly for 5 hours.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Add the boiling cream or milk, salt, and cayenne to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with the cream.

  2. Add the egg mixture to the soup 2 minutes before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Barley + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Barley + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together265 recipes

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

  4. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 recipes: they 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
Its starch thickens the stock and gives the soup body as it cooks down.
Egg yolks
They enrich the soup and thicken it gently when added off the heat near serving.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the soup is too hot or boils after they go in, they can curdle and turn grainy. Adding them just before serving, with the soup kept below a boil, keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, chicken, onion, cream, egg):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, chicken, onion, cream, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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