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Barley Soup

Barley soup is a hearty broth made with barley, water, onions, carrots, turnips, mutton, ham, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Barley Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the barley, water, onions, carrots, and turnips.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer gently for 2 hours.

  3. Add the mutton, ham, pepper, and salt.

  4. Continue to boil slowly for an additional 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, adding tomatoes if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Barley + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together784 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Barley
Thickens the broth as it cooks and gives the soup its body and chewy texture.
Mutton
Adds rich, savory meat flavor to the broth as it simmers slowly.
Onions
Build savory sweetness and aroma as they soften into the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color, and hold their shape through long simmering.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and a tender bite to the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after adding the mutton. Boiling hard toughens meat proteins and can break up the vegetables and barley. A slow simmer keeps the mutton tender and the broth clear.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, onion, carrot, turnip, mutton, ham, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, onion, carrot, turnip, mutton, ham, pepper. 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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