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Soup

Cream of Pearl-barley a LA Printaniere

A creamy soup made with pearl barley, fowl quenelles, and boiled asparagus beads.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Barley and asparagus share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 44 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cream of Pearl-barley a LA Printaniere

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare cream of pearl-barley as directed.

Serve

  1. Pour the soup into a soup tureen.

  2. Add the small quenelles of fowl and the asparagus beads.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Barley + asparagustop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Cream + asparagustop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together838 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Cream + barleytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together301 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl-barley
Thickens the soup and gives it a soft, starchy body as it cooks.
Fowl quenelles
Provide tender, delicate meat pieces that add richness and substance to the soup.
Asparagus
Adds a fresh, slightly vegetal flavour and a bright green colour.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusthe original
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, barley. 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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