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Nut Barley Soup

A warm soup made with peanuts, barley, onion, and salt, served hot with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Peanut and barley share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19 recipes. Both carry acetylpyrazine, which smells roast. The science ↓

Nut Barley Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Prepare the peanuts as you would for peanut soup.

  2. In a pot, combine the peanuts, cooked barley, grated onion, and salt.

  3. Thin the mixture with boiling water to your desired consistency.

  4. Let it simmer for 15 to 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with croutons.

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. Peanut + barleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

  2. Peanut + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,043 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Peanuts
Provide the main body, nutty flavour and thickness of the soup.
Cooked barley
Adds chewy texture and bulk to the soup.
Grated onion
Adds savoury aroma and background flavour to the soup.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peanut, barley. 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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