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Broth with Barley Bread

A simple broth made with onions, chives, parsley, thyme, and barley bread, served as a hearty supper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Broth with Barley Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine cold water with onions, chives, parsley, and thyme in a pot.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer to create broth.

Serve and store

  1. Serve 1 pint of broth with 8 ounces of barley bread for a hearty supper.

  2. Store leftover broth in a cool place; it will last for three days.

  3. Reheat broth when needed, but do not boil again.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Chive + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Thyme + barleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together189 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Release sweet, savory flavor into the broth as they simmer.
Chives
Add a mild, fresh onion aroma to the broth.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, green aroma to the broth.
Thyme
Adds an earthy, herbal aroma to the broth.
Barley bread
Makes the broth a filling meal with a chewy, hearty bite.

The step that matters

Reheat broth without boiling it again. Reheating gently keeps the broth clear and preserves the fresh herb aroma. Repeated boiling can dull delicate herb flavors and make the liquid taste flat and cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chive, parsley, thyme, barley, bread):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chive, parsley, thyme, barley, bread. 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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