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Barley Spoon Bread

A barley meal bread baked after boiling the meal in salted water and adding eggs and drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and egg work together. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 380 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Barley Spoon Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Add barley meal to boiling salted water, stirring constantly.

  2. Cook in a double boiler for one hour.

  3. Cool the mixture.

  4. Add well-beaten eggs and drippings.

Bake

  1. Turn into an oiled dish.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for ½ hour.

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. Barley + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 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

Barley meal
Forms the bulk of the bread and thickens into a firm, porridge-like base as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the cooked mixture and help it set into a sliceable loaf in the oven.
Drippings
Add fat for richness, moisture and a softer crumb.

The step that matters

Stirring the barley meal into boiling water. Adding the meal gradually while stirring constantly prevents lumps and keeps the starch dispersed evenly, so the mixture cooks into a smooth base rather than clumping.

“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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