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Barley Soup

A baked barley soup with milk, butter, sugar, eggs, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Barley Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the barley base

  1. Mix the barley smoothly with a little cold milk.

  2. Boil the remaining milk and pour it over the barley, stirring continuously.

  3. Add the butter, sugar, and salt, then return to the heat and stir until it boils.

  4. Cool slightly, then beat in the egg yolk.

Finish and bake

  1. Gently fold in the stiffly whisked egg white.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered pie dish and grate nutmeg on top.

  3. Bake gently at 350°F (175°C) for 10 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.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Barley + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  3. Barley + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Barley
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the soup body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the barley swells and thickens in.
Egg yolk
Enriches the mixture and adds richness and set once baked.
Egg white
Whisked stiff and folded in, it lightens the mixture and helps it rise and set.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture and flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg white gently. Stiffly whisked egg white holds air bubbles that give lightness. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, so the finished dish comes out denser and less risen.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, milk, butter, sugar, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, milk, butter, sugar, egg. 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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