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Cream Barley, Neilson Style

A creamy barley soup made with veal or chicken broth, pearl barley, parsley, leeks, green onions, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 142 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Cream Barley, Neilson Style

Ingredients

Directions

Make the barley broth

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and pearl barley, stirring with a wooden spoon for 15 minutes.

  3. Slowly add the broth and bring to a boil.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer for 1.5 hours, adding the faggot of parsley, leeks, and green onions.

  5. Season with salt and pepper, then skim off the grease and remove the faggot.

  6. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve and keep warm in the saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the cream and egg yolks, then strain through a strainer.

  2. Stir in the butter until melted and serve with the barley.

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. Barley + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Leek + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  4. Parsley + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together759 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Flour + leektop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Forms the thick body of the dish as its starch softens and releases into the broth.
Flour
Toasted in butter with the barley, it helps thicken the broth and adds a nutty aroma.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the broth and finishes the dish.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the cream, giving the finish a smooth, rich texture.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the flavor and giving a velvety texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and barley in butter. Cooking the flour in butter for a full 15 minutes toasts it and removes raw starch taste, while stirring prevents scorching on the pan bottom, which would taste bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, barley, veal, parsley, leek, pepper):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, barley, veal, parsley, leek, 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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