Barley Broth
Any soup with barley in it may be called barley broth. The French make it by simply boiling Batter barley and adding it to a clear gravy soup, or to any of the vegetable soups. The name in this country is almost always confined to what is otherwise called Scotch broth or mutton broth, the principle of which is in England but half understood. One of the most important and practical questions in cookery turns upon it, and it will be found explained under the head of Scotch Broth.
Barley Cream.--The soup which the French call Crême d'orge. Wash and blanch half a pound of pearl barley, and boil it either with water or with broth-about a quart. When thoroughly well done, rub it through a sieve and add it to chicken broth. Sometimes there may be added also a purée of chicken or of veal. Sometimes chickens newly roasted are cut to pieces and served in this soup.
The entry is half commentary, half recipe: the barley cream at the end is the workable part. It is a smooth barley-thickened chicken soup, and it wants seasoning the original does not mention.
- "Batter barley"Evidently a corrupt reading; most likely pearl barley, the polished grain called for a few lines later, though "patent barley" (a ground barley preparation of the period) is also possible. Scotch or pot barley, which retains more of the bran, takes longer to soften and will not sieve as smoothly.
- Blanching the barleyCover the washed grain with cold water, bring to a boil, drain and rinse. This removes the dusty, faintly sour taste of stored barley and keeps the finished soup pale.
- Quantities and liquidHalf a pound is about 1 1/4 cups of pearl barley; a quart is 4 cups. Barley absorbs a great deal, so expect a thick porridge at the end of cooking rather than a soup.
- Cooking timePearl barley needs 45 to 60 minutes at a bare simmer to break down enough to purée. Undercooked grain will not pass a sieve and leaves a chalky texture no amount of blending fixes.
- SievingA blender or food processor does the work in seconds, but pass the purée through a fine sieve afterwards anyway; fragments of bran and unbroken grain survive most blades and are unpleasant in a cream soup.
- FinishingThin the purée with hot chicken broth to the consistency of pouring cream. Salt is not mentioned and is essential; a little white pepper and a spoon of cream or butter at the end suit the style.
- The chicken garnishIf you follow the last line and add pieces of freshly roasted chicken, add them off the heat and serve at once. Held in hot soup they toughen quickly.
- YieldThe recipe does not say how much chicken broth is added. Working from half a pound of barley, a batch of roughly 2 to 2 1/2 quarts would serve six to eight as a first course.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877) was written by the journalist E. S. Dallas and named for Auguste Kettner, whose Soho restaurant was among the best-known French houses in Victorian London; the book's habit of setting an English dish against its French counterpart is exactly what happens here. Barley is one of the oldest cultivated grains in northern Europe and is often said to have served as a common thickener for broths before flour or rice became usual in fashionable kitchens, which may be part of why it survived in the plain mutton-and-barley soups of Scotland while the French turned it into crème d'orge, a sieved, refined purée served in the same style as the cream soups of almonds or rice. Dallas's aside that the principle of Scotch broth is "in England but half understood" is a running theme of the book: he treats British cooking as sound in its materials and careless in its method, and repeatedly sends the reader off to another entry to be set straight.