Name: Barley Broth
Ingredients: 4 ounces Scotch barley; 4 ounces sliced onions; 2 ounces coarse sea salt; 5 quarts water

Why it works: Barley and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,166 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Barley Broth

Ingredients

4 ounces Scotch barley
4 ounces sliced onions
2 ounces coarse sea salt
5 quarts water

Directions

Wash and steep the barley.
Combine all ingredients in a pot.
Boil for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

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.

Barley + oniontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,166 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Scotch barley: Provides starch and body, thickening the broth as its grains soften during simmering.
Sliced onions: Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and release flavor into the broth.

“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.