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Beef Soup, with Barley

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

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

Make the broth

  1. Remove all fat from the beef, cut it into small pieces, and chop finely.

  2. Place the beef in a pot with the water, heat slowly, and let it simmer gently for 3 hours.

  3. Add the onion, carrot, celery, bay leaf, and cloves, and simmer for 1 hour longer.

Prepare the barley

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

  2. Strain the barley.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the strained barley to the soup.

  2. Bring the soup to a boil.

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

  4. Stir the paste into the soup.

  5. Season the soup with salt and pepper.

  6. 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 meaty flavor and body as it simmers slowly in the water.
Pearl barley
Adds chewy texture and thickens the soup as its starch releases during cooking.
Butter and flour
Form a browned roux that thickens the soup and adds a toasty, nutty flavor.
Onion
Builds savory sweetness and aroma as it cooks into the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the butter. Flour must be stirred in butter until smooth and brown before it goes into the soup. Cooking out the raw starch taste and thickening evenly depend on this, so lumps and a pasty flavor are avoided.

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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