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Dinner for 8 Persons. November.

A creamy barley soup with onions, carrots, celery, thyme, and bay leaf.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Dinner for 8 Persons. November.

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Cook the barley

  1. Rinse the pearl barley under cold water.

  2. In a large pot, bring water to a boil and add the barley.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes until tender.

Add the vegetables and finish

  1. In a separate pan, melt butter and sauté onion, carrots, and celery until soft.

  2. Add the sautéed vegetables to the barley along with bay leaf and thyme.

  3. Simmer for an additional 15 minutes.

  4. Stir in heavy cream and season with salt to taste.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Barley + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together784 recipes

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Provides the chewy body and bulk that make the soup thick and hearty.
Heavy cream
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture and a creamy mouthfeel.
Butter
Softens the onion, carrots and celery and adds a rich, savoury flavour.
Onion
Builds a sweet, savoury base flavour as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Stir in heavy cream and season with salt to taste. Cream added to a boiling soup can curdle or separate, so it should be stirred in off the heat or at a gentle simmer. Salt is best adjusted at the end, since the flavours concentrate as the soup reduces.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, butter, carrot, celery, thyme, cream. 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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