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Beef Soup, with Barley

A hearty beef soup simmered with barley, onions, carrots, celery, bay leaf, cloves, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Beef Soup, with Barley

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove all fat from the beef.

  2. Cut the beef into small pieces and chop the pieces finely.

  3. Place the meat in a pot with the water. Heat slowly.

Simmer the soup

  1. Let it simmer gently for 3 hours.

  2. Add the onion, carrot, celery, bay leaf, and cloves. Simmer for 1 hour longer.

  3. Cook the barley in plenty of water for 2 hours.

  4. Strain the soup.

  5. Add the barley to the soup. Bring to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan. Add the flour and stir until smooth and brown.

  2. Stir the paste into the soup.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Serve.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + barleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together784 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Round beef
Provides the main meat flavor and becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Pearl barley
Thickens the broth slightly and adds a chewy texture to the soup.
Flour
Browned in butter and stirred in, it thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.
Butter
Carries the flour as it browns, adding richness and a toasted aroma.
Onion
Releases sweetness and aroma into the broth during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in butter. Flour left too pale or too dark, or added lumpy, will thicken unevenly or taste raw. Stirring until smooth and evenly browned cooks off the raw starch taste and gives a toasted flavor before the paste is blended into the hot soup.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, carrot, celery, barley, butter, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, carrot, celery, barley, butter, flour. 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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