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Barley Broth with Vegetables

A hearty broth made with mutton bones, barley, vegetables, and oatmeal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Barley Broth with Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Trim a neck of mutton into neat cutlets and reserve them for later.

  2. Put the bones and trimmings into 3 quarts of cold water and boil slowly, skimming thoroughly.

  3. Add the soaked barley, bouquet of sweet herbs, salt, and pepper, and simmer for 2 hours.

  4. Strain out 1 quart of the broth for later use.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the diced carrots, onions, and turnips to the remaining broth.

  2. Mix the oatmeal with cold water to form a smooth batter and add it to the broth.

  3. Simmer until the vegetables are tender.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 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. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Barley
Softens during long simmering and thickens the broth as its starch releases.
Oatmeal
Mixed to a batter first, it thickens the broth and gives the soup body.
Carrots
Hold their shape and add sweetness as they cook down in the broth.
Onions
Soften and add savoury depth and aroma to the broth.
Yellow turnips
Soften during simmering and add a mild, slightly peppery flavour.

The step that matters

Mixing the oatmeal into a smooth batter. Oatmeal added dry or in lumps will clump and stay grainy. Whisking it smoothly with cold water first lets the starch disperse evenly, so it thickens the broth without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, pepper, carrot, turnip. 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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