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Soup

Barley Cream

A creamy barley soup made with veal or chicken, barley, water, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and barley work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 162 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Barley Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shred the veal or pass it through a mincing machine.

  2. Wash and blanch the barley.

Simmer

  1. Combine the veal, cold water, barley, and a little salt in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer gently for two hours.

Finish

  1. Pound the meat and barley in a mortar with some of the cooking liquid, season, and rub through a sieve.

  2. Add the cream, slightly whipped, and warm if necessary.

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. Veal + barleytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Barley + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together301 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Veal + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal cutlet or chicken
Provides the meat flavour and body of the soup as it simmers.
Pearl barley
Thickens the soup as its starch releases during long simmering.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently rather than boil. A hard boil can break up the barley and cloud the liquid, while gentle simmering lets the meat and grain release flavour and starch slowly and evenly.

“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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