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Barley Broth

A hearty soup made with pearl barley, lamb or beef, and optional vegetables, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Barley Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley

  1. Boil the pearl barley in 1 gallon of water gently for 1 hour.

Cook the meat and vegetables

  1. In a separate saucepan, add the meat and a small quantity of water.

  2. Add any vegetables you have, along with salt and pepper.

  3. Cook until the meat and vegetables are tender.

Combine and simmer

  1. Combine the meat and vegetables with the barley and water.

  2. Let the mixture boil gently for 2 hours or longer.

  3. Serve everything together.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Swells and softens as it simmers, thickening the broth and giving it body.
Lamb or mutton chops
Releases flavour and gelatin into the broth as it cooks slowly, adding richness.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour to the broth as they soften.

The step that matters

Keeping the long simmer gentle. Boiling the barley and meat hard can break meat fibres apart and make the broth cloudy. A gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and the barley intact while collagen slowly breaks down into rich body.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, lamb, turnip, onion, celery, peas, pepper):

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Carrotthe original
  3. Asparagusfits less well
  4. Lettucefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, lamb, turnip, onion, celery, peas, 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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