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Barley Broth

A hearty broth made with mutton or veal, barley, carrot, onion, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Barley Broth

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces and break the bones.

  2. Combine the meat, bones, onion, and cold water in a pot.

  3. Cook slowly for 5 hours.

  4. Season, then set aside until the next day.

  5. Skim off the fat and strain out the bones and meat.

Finish and serve

  1. Put the broth back in the pot with the soaked barley and diced carrot.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour 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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + barleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together784 recipes

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

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Onion + barleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,166 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Swells as it simmers, thickening the broth and giving it a chewy body.
Mutton or veal
Gives the broth its savory depth and body as it cooks slowly with the bones.
Onion
Fried to brown, it adds a sweet, deep aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Cooking the broth slowly for 5 hours. A slow, gentle simmer draws collagen and flavor from the meat and bones without clouding the broth. Boiling hard emulsifies fat into the liquid and makes the broth cloudy and greasy. Setting it aside overnight lets the fat solidify on top so it can be skimmed off cleanly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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