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Barley Lemonade

A sweet, lemony drink made with barley water, sugar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and barley work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 484 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Barley Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a small saucepan, combine sugar and water. Boil for about 10 minutes until it forms a thick syrup.

  2. Add the lemon rind and pulp, and boil for 2 more minutes.

  3. Stir in the barley-water and boil for an additional 5 minutes.

Strain and store

  1. Strain through a fine sieve into a jug and cover with paper, leaving a hole for steam to escape.

  2. Let it cool before serving.

  3. Store in a bottle with a cork for several days.

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. Lemon + barleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together484 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + barleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, when boiled with water, forms the thick syrup that carries the flavour.
Fresh lemon pulp
Adds sharp acidity and fresh citrus flavour to the drink.
Fresh lemon rind
Contributes aromatic citrus oils that give the lemonade its fragrance.
Barley-water
Forms the main liquid base, giving the drink its body and mild flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup and barley-water. Boiling sugar and water to a thick syrup dissolves the sugar fully and concentrates the sweetness, so the later addition of barley-water and lemon does not leave the drink grainy or weak.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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