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Pearl Barley Soup

A soup made with pearl barley, fowl or veal, carrots, butter, flour, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 784 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pearl Barley Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat stock

  1. Cook the meat in water until tender.

  2. Strain the meat stock through a sieve.

Prepare the barley and carrot

  1. Combine the barley with the stock and 1 tablespoon of butter in a separate pot.

  2. Let the barley and butter mixture swell.

  3. Slice the carrot finely.

  4. Stew the sliced carrot slowly in the remaining butter.

  5. Add the cooked barley to the carrot mixture.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the strained stock to the pot.

  2. If the soup is not thick enough, mix the flour with a little butter.

  3. Add the flour mixture to the soup.

  4. Let the soup boil.

  5. Season the soup with salt.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Barley + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together582 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Meat + barleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together224 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 cooks, giving the soup body and a chewy, substantial texture.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavour of the carrot as it stews gently.
Carrot
Softens while stewing in butter, adding gentle sweetness and colour.
Flour
Thickens the broth when mixed with butter and stirred into the soup.
Meat (fowl or veal)
Gives the stock its savoury, meaty flavour.

The step that matters

Let the flour mixture into the soup and boil. Flour mixed with butter must be stirred in smoothly and the soup brought to a boil so the starch thickens fully and no lumps remain.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, 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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