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Barley Soup

A hearty soup made with barley, stale bread, butter, parsley, salt, and water, simmered slowly for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Barley Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley

  1. Wash and steep the barley in ½ pint of water with a piece of carbonic soda the size of a pea for 12 hours.

Cook and finish

  1. Pour off the unabsorbed water, add the bread crumbs, 3 quarts of boiling water, and the salt.

  2. Boil slowly in a covered pan for 4 to 5 hours.

  3. Add the parsley, butter, and white pepper about 30 minutes before serving.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Barley + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together630 recipes

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

  3. Barley + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together201 recipes

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Barley
Its starch thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it body.
Stale bread
Its crumbs dissolve into the liquid, adding thickness and a soft texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, bread, butter. 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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