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Barley Broth

A hearty beef and barley soup simmered with onion, turnip, celery, and spices, finished with a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 629 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Barley Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash the barley well in cold water.

  2. Place the beef and barley in a saucepan with the cold water.

  3. Set over low heat and bring to a boil, skimming off any scum.

  4. Add the onion, turnip, celery, white pepper, and salt.

  5. Cover and let simmer slowly for 4 hours, stirring occasionally.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the meat and keep it warm.

  2. Skim the fat off the broth and pour it into a tureen.

  3. For the sauce, thicken ½ pint of broth with the flour, cayenne pepper, and ketchup in a saucepan.

  4. Simmer gently, stirring until it boils, then pour over the meat.

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 + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Barley + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together571 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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

Scotch barley
Swells as it simmers, thickening the broth and giving it body.
Leg of beef
Long simmering breaks down its connective tissue, flavouring the broth and making the meat tender.
Ready-browned flour
Thickens the sauce so it coats the meat.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmering the broth gently. A hard boil makes the meat tough and cloudy, and the broth murky. Keeping it at a slow simmer lets the beef become tender while the broth stays clear and the barley cooks evenly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, beef, onion, turnip, celery, sauce, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, beef, onion, turnip, celery, sauce, flour. 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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