Name: Barley Broth
Ingredients: 1 cup pearl barley; 1 gallon water; 3 lbs meat (lamb, mutton, or lean beef); Vegetables (carrots, turnips, small onions, celery, green peas if in season); Salt; Pepper

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Barley Broth

Ingredients

1 cup pearl barley
1 gallon water
3 lbs meat (lamb, mutton, or lean beef)
Vegetables (carrots, turnips, small onions, celery, green peas if in season)
Salt
Pepper

Directions

Prepare

Boil the pearl barley in 1 gallon of water gently for 1 hour.
In a separate pot, place the meat and add a small amount of water.
Add the vegetables, salt, and pepper to the meat.

Simmer and serve

Combine the barley and meat mixture, and let it boil gently for 2 hours or longer.
Serve everything together.

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.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together629 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley: Thickens the broth as its starch releases during long gentle boiling.
Meat: Adds savory flavor and richness to the broth as it simmers.
Vegetables: Contribute sweetness and aroma to the broth as they cook.

Swap the peas

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

Beansfits better
Lentilsfits better
Chestnutfits better
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, meat, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, 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.