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Barley Broth

A simple barley broth made with barley flour, water, beef broth, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and beef work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 458 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Barley Broth

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Blend barley flour with cold water.

  2. Add the mixture to hot beef broth.

  3. Cook over simmering water for 30 minutes.

  4. Add salt, strain, 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 + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Barley + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together582 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + beeftop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and beef barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Barley flour
Thickens the broth as its starches swell when heated, giving it body.
Beef broth
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the dish.

The step that matters

Blending barley flour with cold water before adding it to hot broth. Starch clumps if it meets hot liquid dry or undispersed. Mixing it smooth in cold water first lets the grains separate, so the broth thickens evenly when heated.

“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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