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Barley Soup

A simple soup made with barley, stock, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and barley work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 458 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Barley Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley

  1. Steam the barley until thoroughly soft.

  2. Pass the cooked barley through a fine sieve to disintegrate it.

Make the soup

  1. Add the disintegrated barley to the boiling stock.

  2. Cook for a few minutes.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Beef + barleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together458 recipes

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Barley + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together897 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 soup as it breaks down, giving it body and a smooth texture.
Soup stock or beef extract
Forms the liquid base and supplies the main savoury beef flavour.

The step that matters

Passing the cooked barley through a fine sieve. Barley must be fully softened before sieving, otherwise it stays grainy and will not break down into the smooth body the soup needs.

“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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