Skip to main content
Main

Barley Cream Soup

A hearty soup made with barley, onion, spices, chicken broth, butter, milk or cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Barley Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Wash the barley well.

  2. Combine barley, onion, cinnamon, mace, and chicken broth in a saucepan.

  3. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 5 hours.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve and return to the saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix in butter and boiling milk or cream.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with milk, then stir into the soup.

  4. Heat gently without boiling, then serve in a tureen with toast or croutons.

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. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 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 broth as it simmers and gives the soup its body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup when gently heated, giving a smooth, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Milk or cream
Adds creaminess and softness, mellowing the broth's flavour.
Chicken broth
Forms the savoury liquid base that the barley cooks in.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Egg yolks in the soup will curdle and turn grainy if they get too hot. Keeping the soup below a boil lets the yolks thicken it smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

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

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes