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Barley Soup with Stock

A simple barley soup made with pearl barley, turnip, carrot, onion, and soup stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Barley Soup with Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley

  1. Wash the pearl barley in three waters.

  2. Boil the barley in 2 quarts of soft water for 2 hours.

  3. Drain the barley and rinse it in cold water.

Make the soup

  1. Cut the turnip, carrot, and onion into small pieces.

  2. Boil the vegetables in 2 quarts of soup stock until tender.

  3. Add the cooked barley to the soup and season slightly.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Barley + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together784 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Forms the body of the soup and thickens the broth as it cooks.
Soup stock
Provides the main liquid and savory base for the soup.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and body as it softens in the stock.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and color as it softens in the stock.
Onion
Adds aroma and savory depth as it softens in the stock.

The step that matters

Boil the barley for 2 hours. Pearl barley is a hard grain that needs long, steady simmering to become tender. Stopping early leaves it chewy and gritty, and it will not soften fully once added to the soup.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, turnip, carrot. 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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