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Simple Barley Broth

A simple broth made with barley, water, and meat, simmered with carrots and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Simple Barley Broth

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring 1 gallon of water to a boil.

  2. Add 8 ounces of barley, 4 to 5 pounds of meat, carrots, and onions.

  3. Skim off any foam that rises to the surface.

  4. Reduce heat and let it simmer gently for three hours.

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. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Barley + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Barley + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,166 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
Swells as it cooks, thickening the broth and giving it a chewy texture.
Beef, mutton, or lean pork
Releases flavor into the broth as it simmers, and its protein adds body.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aroma to the broth as they soften during simmering.
Onions
Release sugars and savory aroma into the broth during long simmering.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam. Foam is coagulated protein and impurities that rise from meat at a boil. Removing it early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting rather than cloudy or greasy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, beef, carrot. 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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