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Dr. Kitchener's Broth

A barley broth with onion, bacon, oatmeal, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,166 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Dr. Kitchener's Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the Scotch barley well and soak it in cold water for 2 hours.

  2. In a large saucepan, bring 5 quarts of water to a boil.

  3. Peel and slice the onions to make about ½ cup.

Make the broth

  1. Drain the barley and add it along with the onions to the boiling water. Let it boil gently for 1 hour.

  2. In another saucepan, fry the bacon in ⅓ cup of clarified dripping until browned.

  3. Gradually add ½ cup of oatmeal to the bacon, stirring until it forms a paste.

  4. Slowly stir in the broth from the first saucepan and season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  5. Move the saucepan to the side of the fire and let it simmer gently for at least 30 minutes.

  6. Pour the broth into a hot soup tureen or basin for serving.

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. Barley + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Scotch barley
Releases starch as it simmers, thickening the broth and giving it body.
Oatmeal
Forms a paste with the bacon fat that thickens the broth as it is stirred in.
Bacon
Browns in the dripping, adding savoury, smoky flavour to the broth.
Dripping
Carries the bacon's flavour and adds richness through its fat.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it cooks in the broth.

The step that matters

Stirring the oatmeal into the bacon fat. Adding the oatmeal gradually while stirring keeps it smooth; dumping it in at once can form lumps, and the paste must be loosened before the broth is added.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, 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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