Name: Barley Soup
Ingredients: 2 quarts soup stock; ½ cup pearl barley; 1 quart boiling water; 1 teaspoon salt; ⅛ teaspoon pepper; 1 cup croutons; ½ cup celery root or stalks, diced; ½ cup carrots, diced

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Barley Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley

Wash the barley in cold water.
Cook the barley in 1 quart of boiling salted water until tender, about 2 hours.
When the water has evaporated, add the soup stock.
If making fresh soup, keep adding strained top soup to the barley and let it boil until tender.

Finish and serve

Boil the diced celery root and carrots with the barley to improve the flavor.
Serve hot with croutons.

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.

Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Barley + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together784 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Barley + celerytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together571 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley: Provides the body and chewy texture of the soup as it cooks until tender.
Soup stock: Supplies the liquid and most of the savory flavor of the soup.
Celery root or stalks: Adds aromatic flavor to the broth as it boils with the barley.
Carrots: Adds sweetness and flavor to the broth as it cooks with the barley.

“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.