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Barley Soup

A hearty soup made with barley, salt beef, carrots, turnips, onions, preserved meat, pepper, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the barley

  1. Boil the barley in water for 3 to 4 hours until well cooked.

Make the soup

  1. In a separate pot, bring 8 cups of water to a boil.

  2. Add the partially cooked salt beef to the boiling water and finish cooking.

  3. Chop the carrots, turnips, and onions.

  4. Add them to the soup 30 minutes before serving.

  5. Mince the preserved meat and add it to the soup.

  6. Stir in the cooked barley.

Season

  1. Season with pepper.

  2. Add a few cloves.

  3. Do not add salt, as the beef will provide enough seasoning.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Barley
Its starch softens and thickens the broth, giving the soup body.
Salt beef
Slowly releases savory, salty flavor into the broth as it simmers.
Preserved meat
Adds concentrated savory flavor that deepens the broth.
Onions
Release sugars as they cook, adding sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and a tender texture to the soup.

The step that matters

Do not add salt. Salt beef and preserved meat are already seasoned. As the soup simmers and reduces, their salt concentrates, so extra salt can make the soup too salty.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, beef, carrot, turnip, onion, meat, 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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