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Barley Soup

A hearty soup made with pearl barley, onions, potatoes, and bones simmered in cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Barley Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the barley.

  2. Peel and slice the onions.

  3. Wash, peel, and slice the potatoes.

Cook

  1. Put all ingredients into a saucepan.

  2. Simmer gently for two hours.

  3. Skim the soup when it starts boiling.

  4. Remove the bones before serving.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Barley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. 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

Pearl barley
Its starch thickens the broth and gives the soup a hearty body.
Potatoes
They release starch as they cook, adding body and thickening the soup.
Onions
They add savoury aroma and a mild sweetness as they soften in the liquid.
Bones
They release flavour and gelatin into the water, enriching the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for two hours. Gentle simmering extracts flavour from the bones and softens the barley and potatoes without breaking them up or clouding the broth. A hard boil makes the soup cloudy and can toughen the grains.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, potato. 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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