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Cream-of-barley Soup

A creamy barley soup made with chicken stock, onions, spices, and a custard-like egg mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream-of-barley Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a pot, combine barley, chicken stock, onion, mace, and cinnamon.

  2. Cook slowly for 5 hours.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Add boiling cream or milk to the strained mixture.

  2. If using milk, stir in butter.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  4. In a bowl, beat the yolks of 4 eggs with 4 tablespoons of milk.

  5. Cook the egg mixture in the boiling milk or cream for 1 minute.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Barley + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Barley
Thickens the soup as it cooks down and gives it a hearty body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup when gently cooked, adding richness and body.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the soup.
Chicken stock
Provides the main liquid and savory flavor base for the soup.

The step that matters

Cook the egg mixture in the boiling milk or cream for 1 minute. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the mixture boils too hard or too long, the proteins can curdle and the soup turns grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, chicken, onion, cinnamon, cream, butter, milk):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, chicken, onion, cinnamon, cream, butter, milk. 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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