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Barley Broth

A hearty beef and barley soup simmered with onion, turnip, celery, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 629 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Barley Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Wash the barley well in cold water.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the beef, barley, and cold water. Set over low heat and bring to a boil, skimming off any scum.

  3. Add the onion, turnip, celery, white pepper, and salt. Cover and let simmer slowly for 4 hours, stirring occasionally.

Serve the meat and broth

  1. Remove the meat and keep it warm.

  2. Skim the fat from the broth and pour it into a tureen.

  3. To serve the meat, thicken ½ pint of broth with 2 teaspoons of flour, cayenne pepper, and ketchup. Simmer the sauce gently, stirring until it boils, then pour it over the meat.

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 + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Barley + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together571 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Scotch barley
Its starch thickens the soup and gives it a hearty body as it simmers.
Leg of beef
Slow simmering breaks down its connective tissue, making the meat tender and flavouring the broth.
Ready-browned flour
Its starch thickens the sauce so it clings to the meat when it boils.
Celery
Releases aromatic compounds into the broth during long simmering, adding savoury depth.
Turnip
Softens during simmering, adding body and mild sweetness to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum as the water comes to a boil. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise to the surface; removing it early keeps the broth clear and less greasy for the long simmer.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, beef, onion, turnip, celery, flour, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, beef, onion, turnip, celery, flour, 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.

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