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Soup

Barley Cream Soup

A creamy soup made from pearl barley, white stock, milk, egg yolks, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Barley Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley

  1. Soak the barley overnight.

  2. Strain and boil the barley in water, then strain again.

Make the soup

  1. Simmer the barley in the white stock until tender, about 1 hour.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve and return to the saucepan.

  3. Stir over heat until boiling, then add nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

Finish with egg yolks

  1. Mix the yolks with a little milk and carefully add to the soup.

  2. Return to the heat for 1 minute.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Barley + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  3. Barley + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together897 recipes

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

  4. Barley + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Softens into the base, thickening the soup and giving it body when rubbed through a sieve.
White stock
Provides the main liquid and savoury flavour for the soup.
Milk
Adds richness and smooths the soup when mixed with the yolks.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and add richness as they gently set with heat.

The step that matters

Adding the yolks to the soup. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they meet high heat directly. Mixing them with a little milk first and adding them carefully off the boil, then reheating gently, helps them thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, milk, egg, pepper):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Dillfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, milk, egg, 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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