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Barley Broth

A hearty soup made with pearl barley, beef or mutton, carrots, turnips, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Barley Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley

  1. In a large pot, boil the pearl barley in 1 gallon of water for 30 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. In a separate pot, cook the beef or mutton with a little water until browned.

  2. Add the chopped carrots and turnips to the meat.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt.

  4. Mix in the barley and its cooking water.

  5. Let the mixture boil for 2 hours or longer, skimming off any fat that rises to the surface.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Barley + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together784 recipes

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

  4. Barley + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together458 recipes

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

  5. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Swells as it simmers, thickening the broth and giving the soup body and chew.
Lean beef or mutton
Browning builds savory flavor, and long simmering turns the meat tender and rich.
Carrots
Release sweetness and color into the broth as they cook.
Turnips
Soften during the long simmer, adding mild sweetness and body to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat during the long boil. Fat that rises during a long simmer can make the broth greasy and heavy on the palate. Skimming it off keeps the soup clear and cleaner-tasting.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits about as well
  3. Carrotthe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, beef, turnip. 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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