Skip to main content
Main

Consomme with Pearl Barley

A consommé soup with pearl barley, cold diced chicken breast, and cooked peas, served on crisp crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Barley and peas work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 187 recipes. Both carry 2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Consomme with Pearl Barley

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine 1 quart consommé, ¼ cup well‑washed pearl barley, and 1 pint boiling water in a granite kettle.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for 45 minutes.

  3. Add ⅓ cup diced cold chicken breast and 2 tablespoons cooked peas.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup on crisp crackers.

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 + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together187 recipes

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

  2. Barley + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together265 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,528 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Softens as it simmers, adding body and chewy texture to the broth.
Chicken breast
Adds protein and savory meat flavor to the soup.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Peanutfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, chicken. 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes