Why it works: Barley and pepper work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 897 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Barley Broth with Vegetables
Ingredients
Directions
Trim a neck of mutton into neat cutlets and reserve them for later.
Put the bones and trimmings into a pot with 3 quarts of cold water.
Boil slowly and skim thoroughly.
Add the soaked barley, bouquet of sweet herbs, salt, and pepper.
Simmer for 2 hours.
Strain the broth before serving.
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.
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Barley + peppertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together897 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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