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Soup

Ill Invalid Soup

A hearty soup made with veal or beef, pearl barley, celery, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and celery work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 571 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Ill Invalid Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the veal or beef with pearl barley in water very slowly.

  2. Cook until the mixture reaches the consistency of good cream.

  3. Flavor with fresh celery or celery seed and salt.

  4. Strain through a fine sieve and serve.

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

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

  2. Veal + celerytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Veal + barleytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal or beef
Provides the meat flavor and body that makes the soup savory.
Pearl barley
Releases starch as it simmers, thickening the broth to a creamy consistency.
Water
Acts as the cooking liquid that extracts flavor and carries the barley to a soft texture.

The step that matters

Cook very slowly until creamy. Simmering gently keeps the meat tender and lets the barley release starch slowly, so the soup thickens evenly. Rapid boiling can toughen the meat and cause the starch to scorch on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Celerythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, 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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