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Barley Soup

A thick soup made from pearl barley, stock, egg yolk, cream, butter, and served with fried bread or peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Barley Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the puree

  1. Boil the pearl barley in the white stock until it is reduced to a pulp.

  2. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve to create a puree.

  3. Return the puree to the fire and bring it to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Off the heat, stir in the beaten egg yolk and cream.

  2. Add the butter and mix well.

  3. Serve with fried bread dice or young peas that have been boiled and drained.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Barley + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together187 recipes

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

  4. Bread + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  5. Barley + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together201 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

Pearl barley
Breaks down into a pulp that thickens the soup and gives it body.
Egg yolk
Enriches the soup and thickens it gently when stirred in off the heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounded flavour to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolk in off the heat. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat. If the soup is boiling when the yolk goes in, the egg proteins can scramble into small lumps, so the soup should be off the heat first.

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, egg, cream, butter, bread):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, egg, cream, butter, bread. 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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