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Barley Soup with Marrow Dumplings

A barley soup containing marrow dumplings made from marrow, egg, bread crumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 with Marrow Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Remove the marrow from the bone and set it in a cold place.

  2. Boil the bone and finely cut vegetables in 2 gallons of water for about 2 hours.

  3. Add the pearl barley and boil for an additional 30 minutes.

Make and cook the dumplings

  1. Cream the marrow and butter until smooth, then add the egg, salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Mix in bread crumbs until the mixture is very dry, then form small balls with floured hands.

  3. Boil the dumplings in the soup, covered, for 5 minutes.

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.

  1. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef marrow
Melts into the dumpling mixture, giving it richness and a soft, moist interior.
Egg
Binds the dumpling mixture so the balls hold together in the soup.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the marrow and butter so the dumplings keep their shape.
Pearl barley
Thickens the soup as its starch releases during boiling, adding body and chew.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the creamed dumpling mixture.

The step that matters

Mix in bread crumbs until the mixture is very dry. If the mixture is still wet, the dumplings can loosen and break apart in the simmering soup. Crumbs absorb the fat and moisture so the balls hold their shape while boiling.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, celery, onion, carrot, turnip, potato, beef. 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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