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Cream of Barley

A warm soup made from veal, barley, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Veal and barley work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 162 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Cream of Barley

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and barley

  1. Trim all fat from the veal cutlet and cut the lean meat into small pieces.

  2. Place the meat in a saucepan with 1 pint of cold water.

  3. Add the soaked barley and salt to the saucepan.

  4. Bring to a gentle boil and simmer for 2 hours.

  5. Strain the liquid into a basin.

Make the soup

  1. Pound the meat and barley together in a mortar.

  2. Rub the pounded mixture through a fine sieve with a wooden spoon.

  3. Pour the strained liquid over the sieve to help the pulp pass through.

  4. Stir in the cream smoothly.

  5. Warm the Cream of Barley gently before serving, ensuring it does not boil to prevent curdling.

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. Veal + barleytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Barley + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together301 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Veal + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal cutlet
Provides the meat flavour and body that gives the soup its substance once pounded and sieved.
Barley
Thickens the liquid as its starch releases during long simmering, giving the soup a smooth body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Warm the soup gently without boiling. Once cream is stirred in, high heat can cause it to curdle or separate, so the soup should be warmed slowly and kept below a boil.

“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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