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Cream of Barley Soup

A hearty soup made with barley, cream, and beef balls, simmered in a veal or poultry bone broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cream of Barley Soup

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 ↓

Cream of Barley Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the knuckle of veal or chicken bones in 2 quarts of cold water very gently for 3 hours.

  2. Skim and strain the broth.

Cook the barley

  1. Wash the pearl barley in cold water.

  2. Cover the barley with the broth you just made.

  3. Cover the saucepan and cook gently until the barley is tender.

  4. Remove one-third of the barley and set aside.

  5. Rub the remaining barley through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the whole barley grains and the sieved barley and stock back into the saucepan.

  2. Stir in ½ pint of boiling cream and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add 15 beef balls and bring to a boil.

  4. Serve 3 balls to each person.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Barley + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together897 recipes

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

  5. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 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

Pearl barley
Thickens the soup as it cooks and sieved grains give it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Veal or chicken bones
Give the stock its savoury depth and gelatin for body.

The step that matters

Rub the remaining barley through a sieve. Pressing the cooked barley breaks the starch-rich grains apart, releasing starch that thickens the broth into a smooth, creamy soup rather than a grainy one.

“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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