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Sweet Barley Soup

A sweet soup made with barley, apples, raisins, and flavored with grape or plum jelly and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and grape match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,659 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Sweet Barley Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the barley and cook it in 2 quarts of water for about 1 hour.

  2. Add the sliced apples, raisins, jelly, lemon juice, onion seeds, and sugar.

  3. Cook for another hour, adding water or diluted grape juice to maintain 2 quarts.

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. Apple + grapetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Barley + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Barley + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Barley + grapetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together73 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

Barley
Its starch thickens the water as it cooks, giving the soup body.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness as they soften in the liquid.
Apples
Soften into the broth, adding fruity body and a mild tartness.
Grape or plum jelly
Adds sweetness and a deep fruit flavour to the broth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the fruit.

The step that matters

Maintaining the liquid in the second hour. Barley keeps absorbing liquid as it cooks. If the pot dries out, the grains can stick and scorch, and the soup loses its intended volume. Adding water or diluted juice keeps the level steady.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, apple, raisin, grape, lemon, sugar):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, apple, raisin, grape, lemon, sugar. 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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