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Pearl Barley Soup

A soup made with pearl barley, meat, carrot, butter, flour, 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: 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 ↓

Pearl Barley Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the meat until done.

  2. Combine barley with good stock and butter in a pot.

  3. Let the barley swell.

  4. Slice the carrot finely.

  5. Stew the sliced carrot slowly in butter.

  6. Add the barley to the carrot mixture.

Finish the soup

  1. Strain the soup through a sieve.

  2. If the meat is not tender, boil it with the barley.

  3. If the soup is too thin, mix flour with butter.

  4. Add the flour-butter mixture to the soup.

  5. Let the soup boil.

  6. Season with coarse sea salt.

  7. Serve.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Barley + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together582 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Meat + barleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together224 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Swells as it cooks, giving the soup body and a chewy texture.
Butter
Enriches the soup and carries the carrot's flavor when the carrot is stewed.
Flour
Mixed with butter and stirred in to thicken the soup.
Carrot
Stewed slowly in butter to soften and add sweetness to the soup.

The step that matters

Add the flour-butter mixture to the soup. Flour must be cooked in fat before or as it meets liquid, or it forms lumps and thickens unevenly. Keep the soup boiling after adding it so the starch swells fully and the flour taste cooks out.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, barley, butter, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, barley, butter, flour. 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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