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Barley Broth

A hearty soup made with pearl barley, beef or mutton, carrots, turnips, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Barley Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley and meat

  1. Boil the pearl barley in 1 gallon of water for 30 minutes.

  2. In a separate pot, cook the beef or mutton with a little water.

Combine and simmer

  1. Add cut carrots and turnips to the meat.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt.

  3. Combine the barley and water with the meat mixture.

  4. Boil for 2 hours or longer, skimming off the fat as needed.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Barley + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together784 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Releases starch as it cooks, thickening the broth and giving it a hearty body.
Beef or mutton
Provides savory meaty flavor and body as its collagen softens during long simmering.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color to the broth.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and an earthy aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming off the fat. Fat released from the meat during the long boil floats on the surface. Leaving it in makes the broth greasy and cloudy, so skimming it off as it forms keeps the broth clean-tasting and clear.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits about as well
  3. Carrotthe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

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