Name: Babley Broth Fob Invalids
Ingredients: 2 handfuls Pearl Barley; 3 quarts chicken broth; Salt to taste

Why it works: Barley and chicken work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 265 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Babley Broth Fob Invalids

Ingredients

2 handfuls Pearl Barley
3 quarts chicken broth
Salt to taste

Directions

Prepare

Wash the pearl barley in cold water.

Cook

In a saucepan, combine the washed barley and chicken broth.
Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 2 hours.

Finish

Strain the liquid through a fine sieve and season lightly with salt.

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.

Barley + chickentop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together265 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley: Provides the body and starchy thickness that gives the broth its character as it simmers.
Chicken broth: Forms the liquid base that carries the savory flavor and cooks the barley.

“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.