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Pearl Barley Broth

A warm broth made with pearl barley, turnips, celery, onions, and milk, seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 629 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pearl Barley Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and peel the turnips.

  2. Wash the celery, removing any bad parts.

  3. Peel and wash the onions.

Simmer the broth

  1. Add the turnips, celery, onions, and pearl barley to the boiling water.

  2. Boil for 2 to 2½ hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain and rub through a sieve.

  2. Return to the pan.

  3. Add milk.

  4. Season with pepper and salt.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Barley + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together571 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Swells during long simmering, thickening the broth and giving it body.
Turnips
Soften during simmering and, rubbed through a sieve, add body and mild sweetness.
Onions
Break down during the long simmer, adding savoury depth and sweetness to the broth.
Milk
Adds richness and a smoother, creamier mouthfeel to the finished broth.

The step that matters

Boil for 2 to 2½ hours. Barley and root vegetables need a long, steady simmer to become fully tender and to release starch that thickens the broth. Too little time leaves the barley firm and the broth thin. A rolling boil can also break the vegetables apart unevenly, so keep the liquid at a gentle, steady boil.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, turnip, celery, milk, 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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