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Potage d'Orge Perle D laUongroise —

A barley soup made with pearl barley, leeks, celery, and seasoned with sugar and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 142 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Potage d'Orge Perle D laUongroise —

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley

  1. Soak the pearl barley in warm water for one day.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the consommé and strain the soaked barley into it, stirring to prevent lumps.

  2. Add the white parts of the leeks and celery cut into small pieces.

  3. Mix the flour with some cold consommé and add it to the soup.

  4. Add a little sugar and nutmeg, then boil gently for one hour.

  5. Skim the soup 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 + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Leek + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together152 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. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Provides the body and chewy texture that thickens the soup as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the consommé, giving the soup a smoother, more body-rich texture.
Leeks
Add mild onion-like aroma and savoury sweetness to the broth.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavour and a little crisp vegetable character to the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the barley into the boiling consommé. Adding the soaked barley and flour without constant stirring lets starch clump on contact with hot liquid, forming lumps that are hard to smooth out. Stirring disperses the starch so it hydrates evenly and the soup stays smooth.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, leek, flour, sugar, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, leek, flour, sugar, nutmeg. 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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